Reformat an old G5

[excalibur313]

Hey Everyone,
I am trying to fix up an iMac G5 that has a something wrong with the os and I am wondering the best way to go. I made a dmg copy of my ppc OSX install a while back and over the years I lost the original DVD. Can I somehow boot the iMac in target disk mode and install from a newer intel mac? Part of me wanted to mount the dmg as a disk image and install it to an external USB, but then I remembered that G5s only accept firewire as a bootable device right? Are there other ways to install a fresh copy of an OS onto an old computer?

Thanks!

 

[walterwhite]

IF you made a .dmg copy of the install disk, you would need to "restore" that onto another external HD or Partition. But you would also need a bootable drive/disk to accomplish that... OR another PPC computer, that drive with the dmg and another HD/Partition
Because its PPC you can't use the Intel version unless you install 10.5 universal.
You are right on the firewire only... USB is not usable to boot on PPC.

If you find another computer you could also use the dmg file and restore it back to a DVD (Dual layer may be needed)

Hope that makes sense.




Hey Everyone,
I am trying to fix up an iMac G5 that has a something wrong with the os and I am wondering the best way to go. I made a dmg copy of my ppc OSX install a while back and over the years I lost the original DVD. Can I somehow boot the iMac in target disk mode and install from a newer intel mac? Part of me wanted to mount the dmg as a disk image and install it to an external USB, but then I remembered that G5s only accept firewire as a bootable device right? Are there other ways to install a fresh copy of an OS onto an old computer?

Thanks!

 

[excalibur313]

The version I have is 10.5 so can you do an installation of an operating system as universal so that it would work or does it get confused because of things like the partition structures would be different (GUID vs whatever PPC uses)?

I wonder if I could create two partitions on the imac using an intel computer and restoring the dmg on one partition and then blanking the other one. I could then presumably load off the dmg partition and install to the other one right? It is just a little messy because I have that spare partition left over...

 

[666sheep]

Try restore .dmg to USB (APM formatted) then boot off it. Some PPC Macs (mostly with USB 2.0), including G5 iMacs, can boot from USB even without OF hack. Just Google "boot PPC Mac from USB".