Installing OSX on a tower G4..

[drbabbers]

I have a Mac Mini set of installation disks, will these work on a tower G4 or do I need to buy a new version of Leopard?

Also can I use any generic IDE hard disk to install OSX to?

Thanks.

D

 

[Giaguara]

The discs that ship with a Mac are always CPU and model specific - so the discset that shipped with a certain generation and certain build of a certain Mac Mini will only work on the Mac Minis of the same generation and that were shipped with the same build. Thus, no, they will not work for a G4. You will need to get a different set (a retail set - everything else is the same way, cpu specific) to use on your Mac Mini - or just decide that you are happy with whatever OS and build you have on it at the moment.

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Also can I use any generic IDE hard disk to install OSX to?

You can use a name brand IDE hard disk or a generic IDE hard disk -- whichever you prefer. Long gone are the days of "Mac hard drives" and "PC hard drives."

Depending upon your G4 tower model (you didn't specify, and there were at least 10 models of G4 tower released with different specs and capabilities over the course of 5 years or more), you may only be able to use hard drives up to 128GB without help from some 3rd-party drivers (which aren't free) or a PCI ATA card that supports 48-bit LBA.