PowerMac G4 won’t boot from DVD-RW

[ldefoe]

Can the PowerMac G4 boot from DVD-RW discs? I used disc utility on a 2006 iMac running 10.7 to created Mac OS 9.2.2 and OS X 10.0 DVDs but I cannot boot from them. When I boot the PowerMac into my bootable flash drive, it says I need to initialize the disc. Do I need to use CDs or what is going on? I have an OS 8.1 CD that is visible but that OS isn’t supported by this Mac.

 

[weckart]

Depends entirely upon the optical drive and the strength of the laser reader which diminishes over time. If it cannot read the disc let alone boot from it, you should use a CDR or DVD-R instead. You can put a more newer drive into the PM and it should then read and boot from the DVD-RW disc.

 

[Project Alice]

More than likely it won’t with the original drive. Stick it in there and find out, it won’t hurt it if it can’t.

And if it won’t and you want it to, put a new drive in it. It’s generally a good practice to use newer drives anyways as the very old drives can apparently wear out discs sooner.