G4 Tower with 10.4 not recognizing

benjancewicz · #1 November 11th, 2008, 11:49 PM

Hi,

I have a MacPro and a G4 Tower.

I installed a new hard drive in the G4, and since I don't have a DVD player on it, I firewired it to my MacPro.

I was able to erase, partition, and install 10.4 on the drive, and even got it to boot up through the firewire on my MacPro.

However, when I try to start the G4 on it's own, it gives me the flashing question mark folder.

What can I try?

Doctor X · #2 November 12th, 2008, 12:09 AM

I am assuming that when you clicketh upon System Preferences in your MacPro . . . then go to "Start-Up Disk" it does show the Ex-HD as a legitimate start-up disk?

You may also be having a problem with the G4 being a PowerPC and the MacPro being Intel.

One other thing to check: make sure the Ex-HD is journaled. I wasted a lot of time trying to get my MacBook to recognized the Ex-HD as "bootable" until I realized I had not actually enabled journaling--some programs ran problematic off the Ex-HD as well until I "fixed" that. That may not at all be relevant to your situation, of course.

You may wish to post the full specs of your G4 and MacPro for the Gurus to chew over.

--J.D.

benjancewicz · #3 November 12th, 2008, 10:16 AM

Yes, it shows up as a legitimate start up disk. Like I said, I was able to start up using the hard drive in the G4 from my MacPro via firewire.

I'll have to check the journalling thing.

Is there a problem with installing 10.4 from an Intel machine to a PowerPC?

ElDiabloConCaca · #4 November 12th, 2008, 10:25 AM

Yes, there is -- it's quite possible that Intel-only things were installed, instead of PowerPC.

Also, if you formatted the drive with a GUID partition, then you'll be unable to boot any PowerPC-based Macintosh. You must use an APM (Apple Partition Map) partition scheme in order to boot a PowerPC-based Macintosh. This can be checked in the "Options" section (below the graphical representation of your partition scheme) of Disk Utility on the "Partition" tab when you select a partition scheme.

benjancewicz · #5 November 12th, 2008, 09:29 PM

Ok,
I repartitioned the G4's hard drive using the APM (Apple Partition Map). But now when I try to install 10.4 on it through firewire, I get the message "Mac OS X cannot start up on this drive."

What can I do next?

Doctor X · #6 November 12th, 2008, 09:48 PM

Make sure the partition has journaling enabled.

--J.D.

benjancewicz · #7 November 12th, 2008, 09:53 PM

It did. I've done that each time I've partitioned.

ElDiabloConCaca · #8 November 12th, 2008, 10:42 PM

I think you've run into a catch-22 with trying to install a bootable OS X from an Intel-based Mac onto a PowerPC-based Mac.

In addition, this is probably only possible with Mac OS X 10.5, since 10.5 is the only OS X version thus far that has been sold at retail as a "universal" install disk (meaning it can install on Intel-based or PowerPC-based Macs).

If you have a retail version of Mac OS X 10.4, then you can only use it to install on PowerPC-based Macs, and it won't even boot an Intel-based Macintosh.

If you have a computer-specific version of 10.4 (gray-colored disks), which is what I assume you have since you were able to boot your Intel-based Macintosh with it, then you cannot use it to install on a PowerPC-based Macintosh for two reasons:

1) It's probably Intel-specific, but if we pretend for a moment that it's universal...
2) ...the gray-colored disk's license is tied to the machine that it came with, and can only be used to reinstall the system on the Macintosh that it shipped with (or another Macintosh that's an identical model).