Reinstall OSX without CD

L

liam79

Registered
Hi,

I have recently purchased an old G4 tower (graphite), with OS9, to use as a backup server. I have my a copy of tiger on CD, so i expected this to be a simple case of reboot, load off CD, then wipe HD and install tiger.

The first problem i have had is that this machine turns out to have a DVD RAM drive instead of a standard drive. I ordered a caddy so i could hopefully use the same DVD to reinstall the OS, but it won't read this.

I'm now thinking of options on how to maybe reinstall the OS without the drive, maybe a net re-install, if that's possible? I have a G4 15" powerbook, a router and ethernet cables....

Has anyone got any suggestions, I would be very appreciative.

Thanks in advance,

L
 
I wonder if you could boot up the tower in Target mode (hold T key down on restart till you see firewire) and then install OS X from your laptop. Don't install X on the laptop, just view your tower as a hard drive and install OS X on that.

You'll just need a firewire cable to connect your tower to your laptop.

Remember to save any files from your tower you want to keep before you do the install, as I assume you want to do a wipe and install. Will demolish all data from that computer.
 
The other way 'round is better. Put the DVD into the laptop and reboot it in Target mode. Then you can start the tower from the DVD. You'll want the installation to know it installs for a G4 tower.
 
That does sound like a perfect option. I didn't know you could boot towers into firewire target disk mode, I'll give it a go.
 
The DVD drive in the laptop works fine, it's only the DVD in the tower that doesn't seem to function.
 
Wouldn't it still need to be the tower booted to Target mode?

You would use the unit with the working optical drive
to install OS X onto the tower unit - which should show
up as an external drive in Disk Utility on the laptop.

how would this be possible if the powerbook was booted into Target mode?
 
Try it. If you boot the tower normally and have a PowerBook attached in target mode with the DVD in the drive, both the PowerBook's HD as well as *ANY* mountable media on the Powerbook will mount. I didn't know about this either, but when I recently did so, I was surprised to see an Audio CD that I had in the PowerBook's drive mount on the iMac I connected it to. It just works. Like magic. And it's certainly the _right_ way 'round. I'm not sure whether things can seriously go wrong if you install a "PowerBook System" on a G4 tower. But certainly, some things _are_ hardware-dependent. You know: Older Macs didn't have DVD drives, so DVD Player wasn't even installed. Etc., etc.
 
It took a bit longer than it normally does to boot to the
install cd on the powerbook optical drive, but it worked
like a charm - that is pretty cool!
 
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