On Feb 27, 2013, at 6:07 PM, Philip Christiansen wrote: > I just acquired a G5 iMac yesterday. As a long time Mac user, I was looking > forward to tinkering around with it. However, there is no OS installed and > the DVD drive is shoddy, so I am being a little fiddly with my solutions. A > few facts first: > > 1.) I don't have a firewire cable. I can't remember where I had it last. It's > somewhere, I just don't know where.
Well one solution would be to purchase another one from Monoprice <http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=103&cp_id=10301&cs_id=1030103&p_id=30&seq=1&format=2> $2 is hard to beat :-) > 2.) I have several other Macs to aid in the process. > 3.) I can pull the hard drive from the iMac and fiddle with it. > > From looking around most of the day, it seems I have two options, neither of > which is entirely satisfactory, or maybe even possible. > > 1.) Clone the hard drive off my G4 mini onto the iMac. They will both run > 10.4, but the last time I did this with a different computer, it messed up > the permissions pretty badly, and I ended up reinstalling the OS anyways. Is > this even possible to do with the differences between computers? Well then something was done wrong. OS X is universal, in that there are no differences between the version loaded on one computer and the other (at least for systems of the same processor type, with 10.4 PPC versus Intel was different). Using CCC to clone one to the other does work well, I've done it myself. > > 2.) I don't know if this will work or not. Is it possible to partition the > iMac's hard drive, partition it with a 10GB portion that I could then use as > an install "DVD"? > If you have (or can acquire) a large enough USB stick you can make a boot volume from it . (Again they're cheap...If you have a Big Lots nearby, they routinely have large usb drives for ~$10 <http://www.biglots.com/p/c/electronic-accessories/kodak-16gb-usb-flash-drive-or-memory-card> is on right now. To make a bootable installer you need ones of these (10.4 may even fit on one as small as 4GB): 1) Put the USB stick into the computer, start Disk Utility. 2) Select the device (the one that has the brand name of the stick, not 'UNTITLED') and click on the Partition tab. 3) Select One Partition from the dropdown for partition number, then click on the Options button. Select 'Apple Partition Map'. continue with the repartitioning and formatting, it doesn't matter what it's called, as that will be overwritten in the next step. 4) Insert your 10.4 install DVD. 5) Select the 'Restore' tab from Disk Utility, and select (or drag) the 10.4 DVD to the Source, and select (or drag) your newly partitioned USB stick to the Destination. Do the restore. Voila! A bootable USB stick with your OS installer on it. This is actually much faster to install with than a DVD. INsert the USB stick in the G5 hold down the option key while booting, and select the usb installer. You can do the same with an external USB drive by partitioning into multiple volumes, I've got one 'in the shop' with 10.5, 10.6, 10.7 and 10.8 on it... (The University has an agreement with Apple, we get the OS, iLife and iWork for free, or at least 'free to me' I suspect there are some licensing fees paid, but that takes place outside of OUR departmental budget.) :-) -- Bruce Johnson "Wherever you go, there you are" B. Banzai, PhD -- -- You received this message because you are a member of the iMac Group, a group for those using Apple iMacs and eMacs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to imaclist@googlegroups.com To leave this group, send email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/imaclist --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "iMac Group" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to imaclist+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
