Installing 10.4 on an old G4

[Rhisiart]

My daughter uses my old G4 Quicksilver 2002 (1.25 GB RAM / 867 processor). It currently runs 10.3.9.

I want to upgrade to 10.4, but the G4 does not have a DVD drive (the install disc is a DVD). I have tried installing 10.4 via an external DVD drive but the G4 won't boot up from this.

Does anyone know a work around?

 

[DeltaMac]

Several solutions - replace the CD drive with a DVD drive (very inexpensive, and fairly simple to replace)
The external DVD drive needs to be connected through FireWire. USB would not work.
You can restore the 10.4 installer DVD with Disk Utility, choosing a partition on a firewire external hard drive as the destination. I have done this several times. That partition on the external hard drive will be bootable (assuming it is connected through Firewire), and you can upgrade by booting to that partition. The install will also be much faster than from the DVD.

 

[Rhisiart]

The external DVD drive needs to be connected through FireWire. USB would not work.

The external DVD drive is USB 2.0, so now I know why it didn't work.

You can restore the 10.4 installer DVD with Disk Utility, choosing a partition on a firewire external hard drive as the destination. That partition on the external hard drive will be bootable (assuming it is connected through Firewire), and you can upgrade by booting to that partition.

I have a Firewire external hard drive. I'll hook it up to my Mac Mini and partition it. Load the 10.4 DVD installer into my Mac Mini and install the OS on to the bootable partition on the external Firewire hard drive.

Have I got that right?

 

[jbarley]

On all my Macs, I create a small 8GB partition on the HDD and copy the system install DVD to it for near instant access.
It is really handy on laptops, when you might be away from home and need access for disk maintenance etc.