Powermac g5 help

[grimnz]

hi all, have recently been given a powermacg5, was running osx 10.5 when i received it, but i had to give the original hd back to old owner, since replaced with a newly formatted 500gb drive. now while trying to install 10.4.3. all i get on start up is the grey screen with the mac folder and a blinking (?).
I have tried resetting smc and nvram, have tried pressing the various key combo's on start up, but nothing seems to work. i do not get a boot menu or anything apart from the grey screen and blinking (?).

when optical usb mouse is plugged in i get light from it, have plugged just the keyboard in, only get caps lock light after the chime.

have powermac g4 recover disc and osx 9.0 disc. have downloaded 10.4.3 as .dmg and .iso

Apple Power Macintosh G5 1.8 (PCI-X) (2003).

please help.

cheers

 

[DeltaMac]

The blinking (?)/Folder means that your Mac can't find a bootable system.
You have to install OS X.
The 10.4.3 .dmg (disk image) that you have should work, but you have to use that to make a bootable installer partition.
Very simple. You will need another Mac. Best method is to make a separate partition on an external hard drive, by using Disk Utility to Restore the disk image to a suitable partition. That partition, for OS X 10.4 (Tiger) installer, can be pretty small - 8GB would be good.
Put that prepared SATA hard drive in your PowerMac G5. Boot to the installer. Install OS X on your hard drive.
You won't be able to download an updater to go to Leopard 10.5. You would need to find the Leopard full installer.

 

[grimnz]

The blinking (?)/Folder means that your Mac can't find a bootable system.
You have to install OS X.
The 10.4.3 .dmg (disk image) that you have should work, but you have to use that to make a bootable installer partition.
Very simple. You will need another Mac. Best method is to make a separate partition on an external hard drive, by using Disk Utility to Restore the disk image to a suitable partition. That partition, for OS X 10.4 (Tiger) installer, can be pretty small - 8GB would be good.
Put that prepared SATA hard drive in your PowerMac G5. Boot to the installer. Install OS X on your hard drive.
You won't be able to download an updater to go to Leopard 10.5. You would need to find the Leopard full installer.

i do not have another mac, can i partition an external drive from win10 pc?

 

[DeltaMac]

Yes.
The external drive needs to be formatted so the Mac can use it.
Windows can't do that natively.
But, you can use some Windows software, such as TransMac, which can format a hard drive for use with a Mac.

 

[grimnz]

Yes.
The external drive needs to be formatted so the Mac can use it.
Windows can't do that natively.
But, you can use some Windows software, such as TransMac, which can format a hard drive for use with a Mac.

[doublepost=1452217297][/doublepost]can i use a flash drive?or will it need to be a sata drive?

 

[DeltaMac]

If you make a flash drive, then that would follow that you would need to boot from a USB device, which can be a problem on a PPC Mac. You would get to search for the Open Firmware commands to boot from USB.
Your G5 takes an SATA drive internally, and can take two, of course.

 

[Fishrrman]

Be aware that there is a "PowerPC" forum here at MacRumors in which you may find help, as well.

Also -- make sure that any boot drive you use has a version of the OS on it that is capable of booting a g5. An older version of the OS won't work.

Does the g5 have a working DVD drive?
If so, you may be able to find a software install DVD on ebay (or elsewhere)...