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Steps to install Panther on early 2005 PowerBook G4?

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retta283

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Jun 8, 2018
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I have an early 2005 PBG4 15", and I am looking into installing Panther. I know that it is possible to run, both 10.3.8 and 10.3.9 came out after this model. Problem is, I don't have the restore discs.

So, I doubt that a retail disc would work. I do not currently have any Macs that can boot Panther natively from a retail disc, so Target disk is off the table for now. Anyone know what I can do, short of getting a supported Mac or a restore disc?
 
Hughmac said:
You could always try these from Macintosh Garden - http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-osx-mac-os-10-ppc - scroll down to #18 - #23 for all available Panther downloads.

Cheers :)

Hugh
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Those are CD images of a retail disc, so they will not have drivers either, unless the drivers for the machine are included on retail discs and I am mistaken. Panther AFAIK does not boot from a USB, so I would need to burn it to CDs.
 
Sorry; I've just tried to boot my Panther disc #1 on my 15" PB DLSD, and it's a no go :(

Cheers :)

Hugh
 
Hughmac said:
Sorry; I've just tried to boot my Panther disc #1 on my 15" PB DLSD, and it's a no go :(

Cheers :)

Hugh
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There is no way I've seen to get Panther to function on a DLSD, as it was released after Tiger by a decent bit.
My config is the low-res 2005, released in January of 2005, a few months before Tiger. So Panther did at one time run on my model. It's just a matter of getting it on there, as no media I've found other than the included discs have the needed drivers to boot.
 
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Dronecatcher said:
I've travelled that path before, tried Panther and then Jaguar, expecting speed increases but Tiger was the fastest surprisingly.
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I've had that experience too. Apple must have upped the performance quite a bit on each release. I had a G3 that ran pretty slow on Jaguar, but ran faster after an upgrade to Panther, then faster still after Tiger, surprisingly.

As far as getting panther to work, I have some panther CDs (images off The Garden) and the exact same model PowerBook as you @retta283. I can play around with it and see if I can get something to work.
 
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Ok, my powerbook sees the disk as bootable if I hold alt, but if I select it, I get the screen with a circle and a line through it.

Everymac says that these computers would have come with 10.3.7 installed, so my guess is that it might not like anything below that. I would think that you need either the specific system disks or maybe a disk image from a different machine that's already been updated to 10.3.9. If I have some time tomorrow I could try cloning a 10.3.9 install from another computer onto the powerbook and seeing if that works.
 
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AL1630 said:
Ok, my powerbook sees the disk as bootable if I hold alt, but if I select it, I get the screen with a circle and a line through it.

Everymac says that these computers would have come with 10.3.7 installed, so my guess is that it might not like anything below that. I would think that you need either the specific system disks or maybe a disk image from a different machine that's already been updated to 10.3.9. If I have some time tomorrow I could try cloning a 10.3.9 install from another computer onto the powerbook and seeing if that works.
Click to expand...
I think that creating something from a machine that supports Panther already would be the best way to do this. I've done this to install Snow Leopard on my 2010 iMac that could not boot from retail disks. Sadly, I do not currently have a Panther 10.3.0 capable machine.
 
Dronecatcher said:
Why Panther and not Tiger?
Click to expand...

Bumping this just to share a finding, but it turns out Panther has better Disk Utility than Tiger/Leopard/SnowLeopard, because it can still make non-compressed non-ecrypted read-only .DMGs that are mountable in Mac OS 9 with its latest Disk Copy.

So that's one thing going for it. (As well as Mac-on-Mac, if that counts.)

Amethyst1 said:
Sorry to resurrect this old thread, but this is what you need:

Click to expand...

Maybe early 2005 PBs can boot from this, but I think the DLSD models (late 2005) can't. Not that I tried, it being 10.3.7 and all, when not even 10.3.9 boots directly.
 
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