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Bummper

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jun 20, 2023
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I have a Power Mac dual G5 (June 2004) running OS 10.5.8. I cut a new partition and installed Tiger 10.4.6 for a dual boot via firewire, since I could not boot into the install CD on the G5. The DVD player works fine. My plan is to run classic mode for some old games. The issue I am having is I cannot get any startup keys to work except for Target Disk Mode. The Option key just boots to the primary OS with no boot manager screen. I cannot reset pram, no response. I cannot boot into open firmware to reset nv-ram. I tried several good Apple keyboards. Startup Disk under 10.5 preferences shows the Tiger partition and the installation CD as bootable, but I'm afraid to try that because i haven't tested the Tiger OS and if it fails I may not be able to get back to 10.5? I checked the CMOS Battery and it's good at 3.65v. I pulled it and forced the power button to try and clear it. There is no firmware password set. Im at a loss. Any ideas out there?
 
What keyboard models are you trying? I've had the aluminum keyboards that came out in 2007+ not work on certain older Macs for startup keys.
 
What keyboard models are you trying? I've had the aluminum keyboards that came out in 2007+ not work on certain older Macs for startup keys.
1687321279133.jpeg


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The aluminum and the older plastic
 
except for Target Disk Mode
I don't know about A1243 (aluminium?) but A1048 is compatible with G5 AFAIK?
Try this: enter Target Mode & press CTRL-Z. If you'll drop to OpenFirmware console, you can try other aliases to use, like "multi-boot", "reset-nvram" etc. If this wouldn't work - sorry, I personally got no other options :).
 
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Kudos 6502! SOLVED. You nailed it. I took the KVM out of the picture and connected directly with the all-plastic keyboard and everything works! Booted to Tiger no problem from the Option key startup. Not my preferred arrangement since I need the KVM to run my multi-computer desk, but I'll work around it. Now I have to get Classic installed but all I have is 9.0 and I need 9.1 or 9.2. Anyone know of a download link?
 
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