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iMac G4 minimum OS?

techknight

techknight

68040
I have an iMac G4 that i picked up from the hamvention, it fires up but it goes kernel panic please turn off your computer screen on startup.

So, i grabbed my OS9.2 disk and its not recognized by the "option" menu.

Then i grabbed my OS10.4 retail disk and itll startup so far and panic saying no driver for this platform PowerMac 4,2 meaning the 10.4.0 retail copy doesnt have the proper kernel for this system.

What is the minimum OS?

 
Processor speed?

I handled some 700 and 800MHz ones that have been allegedly turned into iLamps. Those handle 9.2.2.

Have you tried Jaguar? Those things came out in the Jaguar era.

 
I have retail jaguar as well, it dont see the disk present at all. It will only see my Tiger disk.

i started open firmware, I get this:

PowerMac4,2 4.5.0f4

So, I tried to start it up off the HDD again in verbose mode, I get some strange Cache too big for physical memory (256mb) and kernel panic immediately after that. I have no idea what is installed, thats how the machine was when I got it. panic right away on startup. Thats what verbose said.

But i cannot get it to take an OS as it wont see my OS9 disk, my jaguar disk, but it sees my Tiger disk however it kicks it out saying no support for PowerMac4,2

 
i think you got a ram issue, throw in at least 256megs of something else, pc133 tiger needs 256meg min... also maybe check to see if they may have tried to over clock it...

 
The Tiger Retail DVD will actually boot on 128MB - I've booted my Beige on 128 with the Tiger DVD (and XPostFacto). Just don't count on it being quick though.

 
Not easy, but you can crack it opened and remove the HDD, probably swap with a working unit.

The Imac G4 is not easy to work at, and you will need thermal grease to put things back together :

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18405

Probably the HDD is not the issue, i guess the problem is elsewhere (maybe overheating issue like mine) but i tested both the HDD and DVD driver outside the Imac (with my Powermac G4) ...the Imac cannot be operated more than 5 minutes without thermal grease or you will get into trouble. :'(

 
Hard to say if my tiger is retail or not. Its a burned copy someone gave me. (i know, not legal, but its not the scope of this forum). it booted on every other system I have had. all except for the imac G5.

Gonna try a USB drive, maybe the internal drive has an issue reading the driver library. If that dont work, time to crack it open.

 
Hard to say if my tiger is retail or not. Its a burned copy someone gave me. (i know, not legal, but its not the scope of this forum). it booted on every other system I have had. all except for the imac G5.
Gonna try a USB drive, maybe the internal drive has an issue reading the driver library. If that dont work, time to crack it open.
Click to expand...
I'd say its a restore disc - given that the last iMac G4s shipped in 2004, and Tiger came out in 2005, and supports all iMac G4s, I can't understand why a retail Tiger DVD wouldn't have the drivers for yours.

 
The Tiger Retail DVD will actually boot on 128MB - I've booted my Beige on 128 with the Tiger DVD (and XPostFacto). Just don't count on it being quick though.
Click to expand...
I once booted an Rev. C iMac G3 tray loader into Mac OS X 10.1.4 with 32 MB of RAM!Needless to say, it was REEEEALLLYYY slow! But it worked!

I didn't time it, but I think it took like 3 minutes to start up completely.

This little tangent (cotangent?) doesn't help techknight with his G4, though.

Anyway, back on topic:

I agree with LCGuy; it's probably is a restore disk. Perhaps booting the G4 into Target Disk Mode and installing from another PPC-based Mac on which the disk will boot will work. Has that been attempted?

If you can successfully boot up that other Mac using the installation on the G4's drive, you can update it to the latest release (10.4.11), which will definitely support this machine.

c

 
Bad laser in the DVD drive i think. I tried to fire up ubuntu I had burned on a DVD and it complained about finding the medium. Bingo.

I tried starting up the Apple Service Diagnostic CD and not DVD, it booted all the way into Mac OS X.

I cant get my USB DVD drive to boot. Shows up the disk in the drive picker on startup, but if i click it, it just goes back and refreshes the screen. I guess they dont boot from USB?

 
removed the ubuntu disk out of the main drive, and it let me startup tiger from the USB DVD. what do ya know, it booted. Leopard is installed on the main HD.

I added a 256 stick on the bottom, and the machine booted fine from the HDD, it didnt panic so someone must have removed the RAM which is why it was panicing. However, it only sees that stick as 128mb PC100, its a 256MB PC133 high density chip.

 
I'm told that CD/DVD drives can indicate when their death knell is coming because the DVD reading capability goes out the window.

Those LED diodes don't last forever.

As far as booting from USB, I believe it was Tiger that enabled that.

(FWIW, I installed Jaguar on 64MB of memory on an iMac G4. A little slow, but unusable.)

 
Well someone hacked in leopard. So that told me at one point it had more ram, but it was pulled before I got the unit. As it wouldnt startup. Stuck another stick of RAM in it, and it started up what was on the HDD.

It seems to run ok, but i may go back to tiger. Havent decided.

 
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