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Having trouble burning a bootable Tiger disc for my G5 iMac

M

Mansen

6502
Hey folks. New guy here.

Bought a G5 iMac to replace my aging and rather bulky G3 "Aquarium", but I'm having some trouble getting it ready for primetime.

TLDR; I download and burned a Tiger 10.4 install disc (From Macintoshgarden, and using AnyBurn on my Windows PC), but I can't for the life of me get the Mac to boot from it. It shows up in OSX on the Mac using the old HDD (I am attempting to swap to a new SSD for longevity)

I've been hard at googling troubleshooting all evening, but it would appear that the disc I burned simply isn't recognized as bootable. Does anyone know a surefire way to burn the DMG archives that Macintoshgarden offer, or have an alternative? I only have Windows atm, so no MacOS based solutions available. :(

 
Then I would assume it has something to with how the disc is being burned on the PC.

But that's just a guess.

 
A number of the images I've downloaded of various MacOSes over the years, from the garden and other places, have turned out to be just the data partition, not any of the other stuff that makes the whole thing bootable and magical. 

A lot of imaging tools don't seem to do the right thing when aimed at a Mac bootable disc, IME, and a lot of people who like making images don't seem to know that you need to be careful, or forget. (I have forgotten myself when imaging my MacOS discs and ended up with dud ones)

 
Right - So we're all pretty much in agreement that it's either a bad image, or a bad burn.

Does anyone know a good image that'll install on a "blank" iMac G5, and what tools to use (preferably on Windows, since borrowing a Mac for this is going to take a while). I don't know the exact model - It's 24" from corner to corner (of the actual Mac, not just the LCD) and it currently has a 160GB Drive mounted with an Apple Logo. I can pop the 160GB back in to get more exact specs if needed, but the OS is acting very weird (I initially tried to just roll with it, but I can't launch most apps like Toast to unpack anything)

 
I seem to remember the 10.4 Server *CD* ISOs from the Garden worked for me, but that was quite a while ago.  Unfortunately I'm on the wrong side of the world from my known-good 10.4 discs/images. :-(

 
If you can use a straight, 10.4.0 retail installation, then I can image my originals for you. I waited outside the Apple Store in 2004 on line for it, so I know it’s legit.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
You should determine exactly what model you have to understand exactly what OS it will run.

(Early models needs minimum 10.3.5 and the later model needs 10.4.2. They should all run 10.5.x)

There are several websites that will decode the serial number and tell you the model.

 
SN is w88491fxpp8 , which according to EveryMac is a 20" 1.8Ghz PPC 970 (A1076/EMC2008 model.

As far as I can tell this model shipped with 10.3.5 Panther - at least according to EveryMac.

(Seems like I can't edit posts after a short while - Excuse the semi spam)

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Probably not your problem, but there are versions of 10.4.x that are Intel-only and PPC only, just a thought.

 
MOS8_030 said:
Probably not your problem, but there are versions of 10.4.x that are Intel-only and PPC only, just a thought.
Click to expand...
All retail copies of 10.4.x were PPC-only (except for Server, which was universal). Intel-only-ness is only an issue where OEM install/restore disks are involved.

c

 
Hmm... Haven't moved large files in a while. I imagine something like uploading it to Mega.nz or using a Google folder is a way to go.

 
I could possibly just empty out my entire Dropbox (which I basically don’t use) and just send you a link.

 
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