Tiger on G3 Slot iMac q's

[Stanza]

I have a couple of questions regarding installing Tiger or Leopard, but I am prefering Tiger onto a G3 iMac 350mhz slot loader

OK I have read just about everything I can find out about this, and it is doable.

The G3 has 768meg of ram, and a 80gig HDD so should run ok with tiger.
I understand that 120gig is the limit of this machines bios (or mac equivalent).

Naturally it only has a CDrom and not a DVDRom drive. But I have made a long Cable so I can use a PC DVDRom drive and bypass the internal slot load CD rom drive. (cut down SCSI cable removing 10 wires, so it connects to the logic board, then down to IDE size.) and set the HDD to master and the CD to slave.

So thats one problem worked around, and yes it does work and I can install Panther on it no probs from this drive. Everything works as it should and did before.

Now I understand Tiger won't install on a machine without DVD or Firewire.... This machine now has DVd but still no fire wire....so I found a way to remove the Tiger checking for iMac by editing the plist file etc.

I know I can install to a firewire drive then use disk util to restore this to the internal drive.

questions I have are.

BTW My Version of Tiger is for intel and PPC

Can I say, install a drive in an external firewire case....install tiger from my Mac Mini, then connect this drive via USB (same external case) and use disk util on the iMac to restore to the internal drive?

I am guessing this is possible, but what about the differences in say how the drive is partitioned? The partition type....intel or PPC Partition etc.

And which version is going to be installed? the intel version (as the mini is Intel) and will this boot up on the iMac?

Or does both PPC and Intel versions of Tiger get installed (just different boot codes accessed etc?) and the iMac will just choose the right one automagically?

Or do I need to install from a PPC Mac so as to get the right install to restore?

I have a fair whack of Hardware here, but which way to install is the question.

I have tried Netboot, but not having a copy of Mac Server here....only tried what was around in guides etc on the net to get Tiger (Not Server) serving out Netboot. but as yet I haven't got this working yet. Tho I havn't given up either.

Netboot would be the easiest I guess, if I could get it working.

any ideas from people in the know?

 

[Southern]

I've had Tiger running on the first generation iMac 233Mhz with 288MB RAM on a 10GB drive with only a 24x speed CD tray drive and no firewire. So your machine should be fine. As a rule, anything without a slot loading drive is useless to run Tiger on.

Stick your drive in another Mac (I have a Powermac G4 for this job) and load Tiger on that drive using the Apple OSX install disc. Then simply put the drive in the iMac you want and then it will work fine. At least this is what we did and it worked.

Otherwise, I have five other iMacs (two blueberry, one green, one ruby, one pink!) and all of them that didn't have DVD drives have installed Tiger just fine using firewire target mode from either a Powermac G5 or G4.

I think you need a PPC to install PPC Tiger though, otherwise installing it on that Mac Mini will almost certainly install the Intel version. We had the advantage of having a fairly old version of Tiger that was PPC only, so we had no problems here. Not sure if you can change the version you install or if it is dictated solely by the CPU on the machine.

If you have any more questions, give me a shout.

 

[Stanza]

Thanks for that Southern, yes I also have had OSX running on the 1st model 233Mhz iMac, tho not tiger as I did not have it back then.

But yes now here is the problem I have.

The iMac has IDE / PATA type drive connections.
The Mini has SATA Drive connections.

ok so I have the following bits n pieces

External Firewire 500g drive SATA
External Firewire / USB Raid box SATA (can also act as just 2 drives)
External USB PATA Drive case

Other assorted stuff.

I am going to try poping the 80gig drive out of the iMac in the External USB case and install tiger to that from my Intel Mini....

but what partition system to use? if any so the iMac can boot from it.

Then once installed pop it back in the iMac and cross fingers....but I have only read about this working with Firewire Drives....and not USB drives, altho Tiger can install to USB drives from what I read.

but does it install differently than to IDe / Firewire?

also, does anyone know if an intel install is the same as a PPC install just the extra /i386 folder with the intel boot code added? which naturally this Mini is going to make. but hopefully the PPC ignores and the PPC code is installed.

at present I am trying this

Restored a working Intel tiger installation to a Firewire raid box, with one drive only installed.

Running disk util to restore this via USB to the internal IDE drive on the iMac.

Damn slow USB 1.1 ......going to take a while to find out if it fails or not.

 

[Stanza]

OK that failed.....

next

 

[shu82]

Um, the retail version of tiger (cd or dvd) will install without any tricks in a 350 imac. I've done it twice. No tricks. Just do it! I know it says it needs firewire, but the 350 imac is an exception to the rule.

There is no dual version of tiger you either have an OEM intel, OEM PPC, or a Retail PPC. You need a PPC only retail disk.