Upgrades for eMac

[samusaran240]

Forget the usb burner. Restore the OS to a USB pen and try that. Even if you got the optical drive to boot it will be horrendously slow.

My version of Tiger is on four CDs, I'm not sure if that would work.

 

[tampasteve]

How did you get MintPPC installed? It has a pretty annoying installer. Isn't it sketchy as well? I sorta want to try it though... hopefully it doesn't have driver issues with Airport cards, etc.

TBH I did not do the install. I have installed Mint on Intel Atom machines, but the PPC came with it on it. Sorry I cannot help more...

 

[weckart]

My version of Tiger is on four CDs, I'm not sure if that would work.

I see your problem. You would therefore need to locate your device's address in OF and then pinpoint the correct partition where the bootable media is located. I am not 100% this will work with a USB CD drive but it cannot hurt trying.

There are a few guides online. Here are three you could try although most are doing this with bootable flash drives or external hard drives.

http://ben-collins.blogspot.co.uk/2010/08/booting-your-ibook-g4-from-usb-stick.html

http://lifedigital2010.wordpress.com/2011/04/03/how-to-install-mac-osx-from-usb-on-powerbook-g4/

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060301112336384

The last one seems the quickest but you do need to have a way of determining the partition your install media occupies in OSX, which means having access to another Mac.

 

[KingYaba]

P.S. What's a good Linux distro for a PPC Mac? I.e. best overall performance and ease of use.

Stick with any Debian-based distro like Xubuntu and you can't go wrong.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ

 

[samusaran240]

Eh, I kinda gave up and stuck the combo drive back in the computer then out the other 160GB hard drive in the firewire enclosure. What I'd like to get now is a IDE Super drive. Anyone know where I can get one in the US for a reasonable price?

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Stick with any Debian-based distro like Xubuntu and you can't go wrong.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCFAQ

I'll try them out and see which feel the best for me. Right now I have Zorin 9.1 on my laptop and I like how that one feels. Also got Windows 7 cause not all my games are supported and I'm still learning Linux at the moment.

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Oh! I'd also like to get classic working again, how do I do that?

 

[Southern Dad]

Holding Option at boot to select a USB device doesn't work on USB 2 machines like samusaran240's eMac. Nearly every DVD drive made since 1998 can read dual layer discs without a problem. If they can't, the lens is dirty or the laser is becoming weak. DVD-ROM equipped eMacs are no exception to this and can read dual later DVDs without a problem.

I'm not an expert but I've got a lot of PowerPC eMacs. I am going to have to disagree on this one. I just finished installing OS X Tiger on this machine via an external DVD drive. I selected that drive by holding the Option key when booting and selecting the drive.

Works great. I've never been able to install Leopard using a DL disk via the built in drives. Now, granted these are old eMacs. Maybe they are dirty lasers but my external drive does a great job of it.

 

[Intell]

I'm not an expert but I've got a lot of PowerPC eMacs. I am going to have to disagree on this one. I just finished installing OS X Tiger on this machine via an external DVD drive. I selected that drive by holding the Option key when booting and selecting the drive.

Works great. I've never been able to install Leopard using a DL disk via the built in drives. Now, granted these are old eMacs. Maybe they are dirty lasers but my external drive does a great job of it.

You installed in on an older USB 1.1 eMac. Those don't need OpenFirmware commands and can boot from a USB device as easily as a FireWire device.