Old Imac refuses to boot anything other than internal HD

J

joe7dust

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Technically the latest OSX supported for it is 10.4.11 and this is what is installed now. I have read of many people getting 10.5 to run on it by restoring the HD to a special 10.4 image for <867Mhz CPUs that someone made. Unfortunately the only way to do this seems to be by running one of 2 programs, Disk Utility or Super Duper.

I can't figure out how to get Super Duper to run at BOOT before the HD is mounted so this option is dead to me. Supposedly getting Disk Utility to run at boot is an easy task by simply inserting the Mac OSX Install Disc, etc. but none of them are working. I have a total of EIGHT different OSX discs here and the ONLY one that boots at all is the 10.6 ... Unfortunately once 10.6 boots all options are greyed out including Disk Utility, citing "Snow Leopard not for your system".

I have tried many 10.5 DVDs, many 10.4 DVDs both DL and SL, as well as a couple of 10.4 CDs. None of these work. Not even my USB flash drive image of some commercial software Mac Bootable Utilities boots at all. If I hold down OPTION during boot the only choice is the internal HD.

I even went through the trouble of buying an external USB DVD drive thinking maybe the internal was just having trouble reading the discs properly. The only difference now is that instead of a failed boot or spit out disc only, it now shows the Finder folder flashing with "?" briefly before giving up or just sometimes immediately booting into the 10.4.11 from the HD.

This is a PowerMac4,2 4.3.4f2 Boot ROM with 800 Mhz CPU and 512 RAM. I need 10.5 because youtube videos skip horribly even at 360p with the latest flash installed. I've read many reports online that upgrading from 10.4 to 10.5 fixes this. Something about flash running smoother in Leopard.

Things I've tried:
Reset PRAM
Holding C
Holding Option (no options other than internal HD show up)
Holding Command + Option + Shift + Delete (supposedly some stronger way to force booting externally?)

Things I'm going to try while waiting for help:
Booting from a 10.3 install disc hoping to access Disk Utility before the HD is mounted
Booting from a 10.2 install disc hoping to access Disk Utility before the HD is mounted
Sledgehammer to this raucous POS that I've spent days on and owner only expects $50 for fixing the Flash video skip issue.

edit: Perhaps not on the 10.2 and 10.3 ... apparently these are too old to even find on my fav torrent sites..
 
your powermac will never boot from a USB external, never could, never will.
And if all these install disks you mention were acquired from as you mentioned, "your favorite torrents", I'm glad they will not work for you.
 
Here's a page with a variety of methods to install 10.5 on unsupported Mac models.
You will get some improvement for streaming videos if you upgrade your RAM. Your older iMac G4 can be upgraded to 2 x 512 MB, for a maximum of 1 GB.
It's not a simple memory install, as there's two different types of memory in your iMac.

And jbarley is correct about USB booting, which just doesn't work on a PPC Mac.
You can use a Firewire (not USB) drive for booting to an external volume or installer.

Bottom line - an older G4 (slower than 867 MHz) is not supported for Leopard, and there's a good reason for that.
You can run that iMac from a pre-installed Leopard system - I have a large number that I support in schools. You can also install Leopard with a variety of "fakeout" methods.
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20071214143723301
But, performance with videos, and especially streaming videos is very poor, if it works at all. Updating to 10.5 allows you to update the flash software to a version that just barely works. The CPU and the system bus just don't support the performance that online videos need to work smoothly.
 
Also, what is your take on why I can't get any of these 10.4 discs to boot? I usually just get a flashing icon between finder and "?" even though I stopped trying to use an external drive.
 
My #1 priority is booting to a non-mounted HD environment. Just a bootCD with Disk Utility on it would be perfect, as I'm already following another guide and have a 12GB image that is ready to go.
 
If those were burned from downloaded torrents, then you often get what you pay for.
Mainly - you don't know what you have.

Boot to an OS X installer, and choose Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
The BEST way to do this (because you don't know at this point even what the condition of the CD drive is), is to (using another Mac) restore the OS X installer image that you have to an external hard drive partition. That drive needs to be formatted using Apple Partition Map, not GUID. If the drive is formatted Fat32, that will work too, but is not ideal. When you restore that image to an external hard drive, then you can boot your iMac from a FireWire external case (USB won't work), and do what you like to the internal hard drive.
Do you need some help in locating a FireWire enclosure for that?

The flashing folder/? at boot means that your Mac is looking for a bootable partition. If there is one, it will usually find it if you leave it for a couple of minutes. If no progress, and no boot, then you don't have a PPC-bootable system.
 
Disregard, I'm an idiot.

One of the 10.5 discs I was able to get to boot. Apparently I gave up after the popup saying its not compatible with this system. On the 10.6 all the options were greyed out so no Disk Utility, but I was able to load it from the 10.5 disc. Currently restoring the internal HD to a 10.5.6 for PCC image, will let you know how it goes.

edit: damn, it tried for about as long as it took me to type the above, but then it said Could not mount source Image. Could be because the image is on a USB hard drive. It appears to show all the files just fine... My biggest flash drive is 8GB and the image is 12GB so not sure what else I can do other than changing that file to fakeout the 10.5 compatibility check.

edit2: It's installing!
 
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The 10.6 cannot install on an iMac G4 - or any PPC Mac. There are no tricks that will get 10.6 to work, it's for intel Mac only.
 
I realize that, but it's odd that the Disk Utility is greyed out and it won't let you do anything. On the 10.5 disc it wasn't like this, and it's installing now that I faked my cpu to 867mhz
 
Sure - faking the installer does not actually give you a faster system. It's still the same slow processor, and the same maybe-not-great hard drive, and the same small amount of RAM. And, the same aging optical drive that doesn't read disks like it did when new. The last one, if it really does take 4 hours for the install, may leave you with read errors, and a failed installation.
That's the main reason why I have my OS X installers on separate hard drive partitions on an external hard drive. Much faster install, and more reliable installs.
 
It looks like it is hanging at the end, says "Installing Mac OS X on the volume "untitled". Time remaining: About a minute. It has said this for about 2 hours :(
 
It finally rebooted and is running 10.5.6! The videos still skip but I'm looking into mactubes and something else right now.
 
And, run your Software Update, which will get you 10.5.8, plus other security updates, etc.
Also, for (best) results, upgrade your RAM to max out your iMac.
I don't recommend running Leopard on less than 1 GB of RAM memory.
 
The provider of this image warned against updating. Apparently if you even go to 10.5.7 it breaks it. Don't want to risk it. Right now just looking to cut my lost time and GTFO of this computer. 360p used to have slightly skipped audio and 1 FPS, now it is 3-5 fps and smooth audio. Good enough.
 
Just curious - what is the third-party software that you received with that image that is not update-able?

A standard install of OS X should not 'break' simply by updating with normal Apple updates.

An exception to that would be if you also have other third-party apps that may break by updating to a non-qualified OS X update. An example of that could be ProTools.
So, you might be concerned about breaking a third-party app, but the system itself will update without difficulties.
(or, your 'provider' is feeding you a "load of crap", and a bunch of software that may fail if you forget and inadvertently update the system)
Free software that causes problems for you is no bargain. Sometimes you get what you pay for :D
 
It is already running several version newer than it is supposed to be able to handle. How far do you think I want to update this POS or need to? 10.6.8? Nah...

Maybe this quote from the instruction will explain it better?

"[recommended] to restore the HD with/from the image [probably the easiest and the best solution]

The PASSWORD for the user account is: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 [change it after you install]

Let me repeat: The PASSWORD is: 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Without this password you cannot login, install, or make modifications to the installation [advise that you change it to your own password immediately] It's not very secure [up to you]

Note: 10.5.7 update DOES NOT WORK [at least it didn't in my case, Dual processors perhaps, otherwise doubtful]
If you attempt to update to 10.5.7 - you will likely have to restore it all over again [as in my case]
That is entirely up to you [depending upon what your time is worth to you] If it ain't broke don't fix it!
You have been warned!"
Click to expand...

Funny thing is I never had to use that password, when it rebooted after installation the password was the same as before.

edit: Nevermind, just remember I couldn't get that restore image to work anyway. I used the fake 867Mhz CPU trick and normal 10.5 install DVD. What benefits would I be looking at to update it further? Any chance the video will play better and why?

edit2: Do you know a way to change the flash player settings without the usual right-click -> settings -> disable hardware acceleration, etc.? When I right click and bring the settings menu it freezes on the first tab. I click the checkmark by hardware acceleration and NOTHING happens.
 
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You don't have hardware acceleration, so you would turn that off in the flash player settings.

Not sure why you continue to talk about upgrading to 10.6 - it's impossible on a PPC mac such as your iMac G4 - 10.6 won't run on that architecture. There is no work around such as for 10.5

Updating your 10.5 install means that you would have the most up-to-date system, including such things as a more up-to-date Safari web browser, and a few other apps that require 10.5.8
10.5.8 is the maximum.
You are presently only one full version beyond what is the normal maximum (not "several")
Anyway, most folks would have no good reason NOT to be fully up-to-date.
 
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