I've got a professor at work that has an older imac. Not the original imac, but the one with that adjustable arm for the screen. It's 700mhz originally 128mb of ram, running at 640mb atm. It came with OSX 10.1. I can't get 10.4 to install on it. I had to download the cd version of tiger because his machine doesn't have a dvd drive. The cd's work, but the machine won't boot from them. I tried holding C at boot, going to the startup disk manager (where the cd isnt an option), I've tried mounting an iso I made of the dvd on the machine and installing that way. All of which get me no where. I've even tried xpostfacto but whenever I start it up it says it doesn't work on that specific mac. I don't have another apple to do target disk mode, so what can I do? I'm 1 step away from telling him to get a new computer.

3/3/2007 8:25:30 AM

Sounds like the CDs came from another computer which is why it won't boot your machine. If you have the retail DVD of 10.4, just call Apple Care and they can send you the CDs of it as well for something like $5 or $10.

3/3/2007 9:03:06 AM

I thought you had to purchase 10.2-10.3 prior to installing 10.4

3/3/2007 2:59:12 PM

ˆno apple doesn't do that.

3/3/2007 3:57:05 PM

See if there's a firmware update for that model.

3/3/2007 5:04:31 PM

after considering and careful research.

Take that extra step.

3/4/2007 12:18:08 AM

Ended up borrowing some 10.3 cd's. Everything went fine with those. Fuck you apple.

3/8/2007 1:19:44 PM

I'd also check the firmware even if you managed to get this installed. There's some sort of firmware goofup that will toast your system if it isn't up to date when you upgrade.

3/8/2007 2:48:59 PM

Did you by chance get Intel Mac 10.4 cds?

3/8/2007 5:51:16 PM

....this isn't Apple's fault.

3/8/2007 11:41:35 PM

If it is the commercial copy (meaning you bought it as a standalone) there is a way to do it by cloning the hdd, installing it on the hdd with a computer that supports 10.4, and recloning it back on the laptop.

If it is a 2-disk dvd OSX install disk that came with the computer you are pretty much out of luck unless you use that computer it came with to install it the way I just stated above.

3/9/2007 1:19:52 AM

The cd's I downloaded images of the cds you get from apple's disc exchange program. I have to assume they're ppc supported. I kept getting the error "OSX will not boot from this volume" when I tried target mode with the retail dvd and cds I burned using some random post doc's macbook, so I don't think it was an issue of cpu support. I don't see how this isn't apple's fault since the machine meets all the minimum 10.4 requirements besides having a dvd drive and still wont support 10.4 using apple supported alternative install methods. The copy I bought was a retail stand alone. The copy that worked was the 10.3 4 disk set from a g5 machine.

3/9/2007 3:35:12 AM

So get the real CDs from AppleCare and not the "MACOSX_10_4_TIGER_RETAIL_CD_OMG_ITS_REAL.iso" from bit torrent. Mostlikely what happened is whoever made the image didn't make a bootable copy of the disk and so your version wouldn't work.

3/9/2007 8:21:08 AM

I didn't get some garbage public torrent. The images were posted by an ADC member on a private forum. They've worked for others.

3/9/2007 10:52:50 AM

So the computer meets the system requirements, the retail disk is good, the images you obtained were good (for other people) and there's a perfectly legitimate and easy way to get your very own pressed copy of the CDs. There's a problem here, but I don't think it's with apple.

3/9/2007 11:38:09 AM