pismo with dead DVD drive - how to reinstall OS?

[reekdaddy]

so i got that Pismo i've been after for so long on eBay, and although the description said the DVD drive worked fine, it actually doesn't read anything at all (working on getting a refund but that's a different story).

if i end up keeping it, or at least for however long i keep this particular one, how can i reinstall an OS (preferably 9.2.1)? i've got a retail 9.2.1 disc, an iPod mini i can use as a firewire hard drive, and a USB DVD drive, but that doesn't seem to be of much use (unless I can figure out how to open it up and take the drive out of the enclosure). i tried restoring the 9.2.1 disc to the iPod and booting it into disc mode, but if I try to boot the Pismo with that i just get a flashing ? floppy disc. i don't want to put on anything other than OS 9 right now since it's only got a 2GB hard drive (i know wtf).

i do have a 60GB drive that'll fit in the Pismo, but i'm going to wait to break it open until i know whether or not i'm going to actually be keeping it, and also for when my RAM upgrade gets here.

 

[coius]

Keep in mind that the Pismo can boot from USB. it might be slow, but boot from a USB HDD. Also try putting the disc in the mini and putting the Mini in FireWire Target Disk Mode. I have seen optical drives from a mac in FWTDM show up in another machine as it just forwards as if it's a FireWire disc drive.

So you have two options, USB DVD/CD or FireWire Target Disk Mode on the Mini, then boot off the DVD drive on the mini. Simple as that!

EDIT: Thought you said Mac Mini. Got another machine with FireWire? Even an intel mac should work, as long as you can use the other machine in FWTDM. It should work

 

[reekdaddy]

yeah, i have other firewire machines but all my firewire cables seem to have disappeared, so i need to track one down... thanks though, i'll definitely try that out. i've only been in situations that required target disk mode a few times in my life.

edit: it doesn't seem to like the USB drive very much. if i hold option at boot, it doesn't ever show up. i can't boot it in open firmware (LOAD-SIZE is too small), and if i select it as the boot drive from within 10.2 it just reboots straight into 10.2 again.

 

[reekdaddy]

i'm sorry to double post but i can't edit my previous post again. i tracked down a firewire cable! now all is well and peaceful in the world, and my Pismo is happily enjoying OS 9. thanks again!

 

[coius]

No problem. I assume you did the FireWire Target Disk Mode on another machine?

if that's what you did, I guess I recalled correctly. I had to do something like that with an iBook G3 900 from a Pismo when my iBook G3's optical drive died within 3 weeks of getting the last one replaced (this is my infamous one that went in 14x before Apple replaced it with an iBook G4 (only bad thing to happen to that was that the Firewire port fell out of the side of the machine into my hands right after taking out freshly out of the box apple shipped it to me in. so that went in 1x. I ended up selling it when I got a macbook, which went in 4x, then was replaced, the 2nd went in 4x, apple replaced it with the first Alu MacBook (prior to pro) which went in 2x and I sold it and got a ThinkPad. Good ridence!)

 

[reekdaddy]

that's absolutely ridiculous about the ibooks, but the aluminum macbooks (non-pro) were known to be utter crap. thinkpads are nice but... i just want mac os :I

 

[coius]

I ended up getting a pretty much NIB Early 2008 17" MacBook Pro (non-unibody) that several people in the IRC Channel said was crap (due to the nVidia bad bumps issue) but it's been almost 2 years since i got it and it's still going strong. Machine was in excellent condition and when I got it in early 2010 for $600 (Most used ones were going for $800+ on eBay) and it's been nothing but good luck with it.

I usually have had bad luck with apples, except the pismo series (which I am actually sitting in Panera on their wireless with my Pismo with 6500Mah battery ) I have had nothing but good luck with my 2008 macbook pro. It's a very nice machine, and the battery was at 0 cycles when I got it (2 years after it was bought. it was taken out for two weeks then put back in the box and the company bought iMacs instead).

It's nice, has a great screen and I can squeeze just over 5 hours out of the battery if I try (I now have 80 cycles on the battery).

It's been a breath of fresh air with this, and I have had a shocking experience to have a laptop that has a reputation for failures, end up working better than a new macbook that was supposed to be decent. Pismos take the cake for durability. My old one back in 2003/2004 that kept me going when my iBook G3 900 went in, my pismo (400Mhz) was an excellent standby and I even spilled coffee into it 4x where I dried it out and it booted right up. It was the most abused laptop I ever had and it survived everything. The one thing that got it is on the 5th time I spilled coffee into it, I broke the trackpad connector (that the ribbon goes into from the trackpad) right off the motherboard, requiring a motherboard replacement. Unfortunately I didn't have the $150-$200 that was required to do that.

The new one I am on has been decked out (almost) with 400Mhz CPU, 768MB RAM, 80GB HDD, new battery (6500Mah), combo drive/DVD-ROM (depending which I swap in), PC Card USB 2.0 (or an 802.11g Airport Extreme compatible wireless card).

It is an awesome machine!

 

[reekdaddy]

i have a 2008 MBP as well (the non-unibody one with multitouch), it rules and i love it. while we're on this discussion, i've got 512MB of PC133 in the mail to bump up my Pismo to 768MB, and I've got a 60GB HD to put in it (no idea why it came with a 2GB HD). i've heard a lot of conflicting opinions about what OS to run on them, what do you have on yours?

 

[theos911]

My Wallstreet II 300 runs 9.2.2 and when upgraded to 512, could probably handle 10.3 . I'd imagine that once you get 768mb of RAM, you could run 10.4 without an issue. A 400MHz Pismo with 768mb RAM is the same as my B&W Powermac G3(Yours might be 500MHz, which would be even better) which performs reasonably well. Browsing is a bit slow, but it is quite usable.

The other option is, as coius will vouch, MintPPC. It is the best OS for ANY G3/G4/G5 mac. The developers are active on the forums and can answer any of your questions and solve pretty much any problem. It gets the most out our older hardware.

 

[Appleanche]

I run my Pismo with 384mb of ram with Tiger and it's pretty decent for me, though I only really use one app at a time.