Blueberry wont boot to install CD??

A

ahelbling

Registered
First, I am not a mac guy, so please be patient.
I have a blueberry clamshell I am upgrading for a friend. Installed a new 40gb HD formatted on a G5 Tower running Leopard into the iBook (wow! what a nightmare!) I have an OS X Panther OEM cd in the ibook cdrom and also tried in an external usb dvdrom rom. I press "option" to get to the boot select screen. Mac OS X Install CD shows as an option with a refresh arrow on the left and a right arrow shown on the right. I press the right arrow and it thinks for a couple seconds and comes back doing nothing. I can do this until blue in the face with nothing happening. Can someone please help?!

Thanks
Andrew
 
I am looking at the black box with a giant silver X on it and it has a CompUSA sku tag on it as well as MAC OX X Panther RETAIL barcode sticker on bottom. (v10.3.5 RETAIL).
 
You mentioned that the disc you had in the first post was an OEM CD, but mention in your second post something about the retail version. While the retail version should work theoretically, the OEM version will only work on a Mac that it shipped with. If the disc has a black background with a silver X across it, then it's the actual retail version that will work on any PowerPC Macintosh that meets the system requirements. If it's a solid gray disc, then it's an OEM and it won't work. Plus, it's against Apple's EULA to use the OEM CD on a system that it didn't ship with. You would need the retail version. Check out these links for prices on the DVD and CD version (depending on which optical drive the iBook you have is using):
http://welovemacs.com/6914909a.html
http://welovemacs.com/m9227lla1.html

Now, you also mentioned that this was a blueberry clamshell iBook. How much RAM does it have? Does it have any Firewire ports. This is important because Mac OS X requires at least 256-512 megabytes of RAM (depending on the OS X version that you're running) to be usable.
 
It is the retail version, sorry about that. I threw a 256 stick a while back when running 10.2, so it was at 320. It ran fine on the other HD with the same ram.
 
i am thinking about buying retail version of 10.2 then upgrading to Panther, but it may do the same thing it is doing now.
 
Be aware that the upgrade to Panther is a paid upgrade. If you looks at the versioning, it's "10.x.y". "10" signifies the "ten" in Mac OS X (yes, it's redundant, but whathaveyou :p). The "x" designation is for major upgrades that are usually pay-for upgrades. The "y" designation is a minor update which is free for the 10.x version it coincides with. So while you can upgrade from any version of 10.3.x to 10.3.9, for example, you would have to pay for the upgrade to go from 10.3 to 10.4 or greater. Really, Apple should just have called it "Mac OS X, version 3.x" to avoid people thinking that they're paying for a minor upgrade when it's actually a major one. :rolleyes:
 
Your 40 GB HD must be partitioned to accommodate OSX. From Low End Mac:

"Mac OS X

If you have a hard drive over 8 GB in size, you must partition it or you will not be able to install Mac OS X. If you are creating the partition within OS X, it must be smaller than 7.45 as reported by Disk Utility (because sometimes a GB is billion bytes and sometimes it's 1,073,741,824 bytes); we suggest simply setting it at 7 GB to avoid having to redo the whole installation if the partition ends up bigger than specified (it happens). Mac OS X must be completely within the first 8 GB of space on your hard drive or you will not be able to run OS X."

Actually in my experience, setting up a partition just a hair's breadth under 8 GB works fine. (I've got the original Bondi iMac, now running a 60 GB HD.)

You should be able to correctly format the disk from the Install CD, choosing Disk Utility from the Install menu.
 
I dont understand how the drive not being partition, in the manner you just explained, has anything to do with booting with the retail install cd.
 
ahelbling said:
I dont understand how the drive not being partition, in the manner you just explained, has anything to do with booting with the retail install cd.
Click to expand...

With the installation disc inserted in the drive, did you hold down the C key when you heard the startup chime after you restarted or turned on the Mac? Hold that down after you hear the startup chime and it should boot from the disc if it's the actual retail version.
 
I can not format the disk from the Install CD because my whole problem is that it will NOT boot to the retail Panther CD.
 
I have done that many times to no avail...it just sits there with a black screen and I hear the cdrom turning.

ALSO:

I press "option" to get to the boot select screen. Mac OS X Install CD shows as an option with a refresh arrow on the left and a right arrow shown on the right. I press the right arrow and it thinks for a couple seconds and comes back doing nothing. I can do this until blue in the face with nothing happening

and again, this cd is from a retail box and it is black with a big silver X on it.
 
When you load the CD and get the boot select screen, you have to click on the CD icon to actually select it before clicking on the Forward button.

Could also be that your CD drive is too old and frail to deal with the Panther CD.
 
It is the only thing to select, it is pushed in. You can hear the cd turn, a clock icon comes up while it thinks for roughly 3 seconds, then comes back to where it started. I just tested the cd in a G5 tower running Leopard and the CD works. How else can I get this OS on this new hard drive?
 
If that G5 tower has an available drive bay, you can put the HD in that and install. Or if you have a firewire enclosure, you can similarly install to that.

Just remember, you gotta partition for it to work in the Blueberry Clamshell.
 
I bought a firewire enclosure, created 2 partitions using the disk utility on the G5Tower via firewire. 1 being 8.1GB and the other being 29.2GB. I inserted the OSX 10.3 retail cd in the G5Tower and rebooted. It shows the 2 partitions with firewire icons on them in the setup app, but says "You cannot install mac os 10 on this volume, you cannot startup the comnputer using this volume" for both of them. Now what should I do???
 
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