Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Trying to Install Mac OS X Leopard on my Mac G4

R

rots28

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 7, 2009
1
0
My friend gave me a free Mac. It's in very good condition and is only a few years old. It's a Mac G4, so the software needs updating. It currently has Mac OS X Jaguar:apple:. I got the new Mac Box Set (which incudes OS X Leopard, iLife '09, and iWork '09) for my birthday and that night I tried to install it. But for some reason the disc would just eject itself. I tried what felt like forty times and I'm very new to Macs so I don't know what to do. Coulsd someone please help?:confused: Thanks!
 
As IJ Reilly says, the machine might not have a DVD drive. Even some Quicksilver G4s were offered with CD/RW drives.

Left click on the Apple logo at the top left, click on 'About This Mac' for the system profile showing the processor and memory. Click on 'More info' in the box that pops up to see what sort of drives you have.
 
Besides the obvious that you need a DVD drive in the Mac to install Leopard, you also do NOT want to install Leopard on a machine with less than 2 GB RAM and less than a 1.67 GHz CPU. Leopard will be a royal pain on a machine with weaker specs. I reverted all of my slower Macs back to Tiger and only my PowerBook G4 1.67 runs Leopard well enough.
 
Winni said:
Besides the obvious that you need a DVD drive in the Mac to install Leopard, you also do NOT want to install Leopard on a machine with less than 2 GB RAM and less than a 1.67 GHz CPU. Leopard will be a royal pain on a machine with weaker specs. I reverted all of my slower Macs back to Tiger and only my PowerBook G4 1.67 runs Leopard well enough.
Click to expand...

Excuse me, but my Powerbook G4 which has 1.25 GB of ram and 1.25 gHz processor runs Leopard flawlessly. I've seen machines with less specs run it fine, like the white Macbook with 512 MB of ram.

Leopard is not the resource hog that Vista is. I believe you are mistaken, sir.
 
Bacong said:
Excuse me, but my Powerbook G4 which has 1.25 GB of ram and 1.25 gHz processor runs Leopard flawlessly. I've seen machines with less specs run it fine, like the white Macbook with 512 MB of ram.

Leopard is not the resource hog that Vista is. I believe you are mistaken, sir.
Click to expand...

He often is. I'm running Leopard on a G4 867 PowerBook with 640 MB of RAM. This is I believe Apple's bare minimum recommend specs for Leopard. It's no speed-demon, but then it wasn't running Tiger either. I can still use this five year old PowerBook for Keynote '09 presentations, so I'm happy.

Anyway, from the OP's description, I'm guessing his G4 has a CD-RW drive.
 
IJ Reilly said:
He often is. I'm running Leopard on a G4 867 PowerBook with 640 MB of RAM. This is I believe Apple's bare minimum recommend specs for Leopard. It's no speed-demon, but then it wasn't running Tiger either. I can still use this five year old PowerBook for Keynote '09 presentations, so I'm happy.

Anyway, from the OP's description, I'm guessing his G4 has a CD-RW drive.
Click to expand...

According to the Leopard box, the minimum specs are:

Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5 or PowerPC G4 (867 Mhz or faster) Processor, 512 MB of physical RAM; DVD drive for installation.

So yeah, you're right there.
 
Winni said:
Besides the obvious that you need a DVD drive in the Mac to install Leopard, you also do NOT want to install Leopard on a machine with less than 2 GB RAM and less than a 1.67 GHz CPU. Leopard will be a royal pain on a machine with weaker specs.
Click to expand...

My 1.2 ghz iBook G4 with 1.25 gb RAM runs Leopard just fine. Not blazing, but not bad and not noticeably slower than Tiger.
 
Probably doesn't have a dvd drive.

Leopard runs better then tiger on my 1.25 MDD with 1.5 GB of ram. Could be just the HD it is on though.
 
Your drive is "spitting out" the disc since it doesn't like its taste. Kidding aside, your CD Drive doesn't understand the Leopard Install DVD Disc.

The Solutions:
A. Install from a USB DVD Drive.
B. Take your hard drive out and attach it to a mac that does have a DVD drive then perform installation.
C. Upgrade your CD-RW Drive to a Superdrive.
D. Install from a USB DVD Drive. (LOL!)

"A" really is your most cost-efficient and easiest solution.

I hope I've helped...
 
OneBlueFire said:
Your drive is "spitting out" the disc since it doesn't like its taste. Kidding aside, your CD Drive doesn't understand the Leopard Install DVD Disc.

The Solutions:
A. Install from a USB DVD Drive.

"A" really is your most cost-efficient and easiest solution.
Click to expand...

The G4's either came with a DVD reader or CD burner. Either way, the first thing that I replaced on my G4 was the optical drive as the standard DVD reader I had sucked enormously after a few years and couldn't read any new or burned disks (it only read the older retail DVD's I had at the time).

If you know how to replace the optical drive on your G4 (it's not all that difficult, instructions can easily be found online if not videos from YouTube), it's rather inexpensive to get the newest style DL DVD/CD burner for under $75.

Aside from that, click on the Apple Menu on the upper left hand side of the screen and click About This Mac to view your system information. 512MB RAM and an 867mhz processor are required for Leopard, though I personally recommend 1Ghz and 1GB of RAM for a better experience; however; while some G4's had dual processors (labeled as DP in About This Mac), even the 800mhz DP G4's doesn't officially meet the req. for Leopard.

As a side note, if you don't meet the minimum requirements yet still want to try Leopard out or if you want to avoid purchasing a new optical drive, if you have a friend with a non Intel Mac (a Powerbook or other G4 tower; a G5 may work) you can install Leopard using Target Disk Mode (as long as the other Mac you are using does meet the req.), though I wouldn't personally recommend this if you are using it to bypass the minimum requirements.

If you don't want to install a new drive yourself, as any repair shop will charge you too much for the amount of work involved for this particular thing, I suggest purchasing a FireWire drive instead of USB. The old G4's didn't have USB 2.0 and I believe that only the newer Intel machines can boot from USB devices. Yours can boot from FireWire devices. I haven't checked lately but Lacie offered FireWire DVD burners for Mac for around $120.
 
similar situation

I'm also trying to install Leopard on PowerMac G4 (867mhz, dvd-superdrive, 512mb).
The difference is, mine is a used school purchase.
I insert disk, dialogue comes up and I select restart to install. The Mac restarts & rather than installing the new OS, the old 10.0.4 loads up. I've tried holding down C and I've tried cmd,shift,option,delete (both on startup) and still nothing. I'm thinking this Mac has locks to prevent student mischief. If anyone can help ,that would be cool.

I'm new to this site and don't know how to post a new thread, but this one seems close enough.
P.S. I'm also new to Mac's (have two PC's) Thank you.
 
Running Leopard on a near-minimum-spec G4 is a nightmare. Trust me, I did it for a year before giving up in frustration and reverting back to Tiger. My machine in question was an iBook G4 / 1GHz / 640MB. My friend has a similar iBook G4 / 1.42GHz / 512MB and it was even worse. More beachballs than a Jimmy Buffett concert. Even magnifying the dock was clunky, like a 4fps animation. I suspect more RAM would have made a world of difference with both iBook's but the fact remains -- for "normal" day-to-day use, a near-minimum spec G4 just ain't up to Leopard. (Tiger still streaks on them BTW!)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back