Buying an OS X Leopard DVD

[macwant]

I recently discovered MacRumors has a pretty active PowerPC community. My first Mac was a 2005 iMac G5 and I’ve held onto it all these years.

I’ve decided I’d like to do a clean install of the last supported OS (Leopard 10.5). Couple of questions.

1) If I buy a 10.5 install disk, I’m assuming there’s zero chance of upgrading to 10.5.6 over the internet if the disk is 10.5.1. Is this a correct assumption?
2) I currently have 10.5.6 installed. Did 10.5 come with some sort of boot and restore mode like the latest versions of OS X do? So I could boot from a partition and do a clean install with what I already have?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the original install disk. Not that it would help since I want the latest minor supported version. Looking forward to some info from the community.
[automerge]1594956012[/automerge]
I should note that I plugged the thing in and it booted right up, so that’s not a concern. All things considered it still felt pretty snappy and modern. It’s aged very well and I was impressed a 15 year old computer booted up with zero issues.

 

[eyoungren]

I recently discovered MacRumors has a pretty active PowerPC community. My first Mac was a 2005 iMac G5 and I’ve held onto it all these years.

I’ve decided I’d like to do a clean install of the last supported OS (Leopard 10.5). Couple of questions.

1) If I buy a 10.5 install disk, I’m assuming there’s zero chance of upgrading to 10.5.6 over the internet if the disk is 10.5.1. Is this a correct assumption?
2) I currently have 10.5.6 installed. Did 10.5 come with some sort of boot and restore mode like the latest versions of OS X do? So I could boot from a partition and do a clean install with what I already have?

Unfortunately, I don’t have the original install disk. Not that it would help since I want the latest minor supported version. Looking forward to some info from the community.
[automerge]1594956012[/automerge]
I should note that I plugged the thing in and it booted right up, so that’s not a concern. All things considered it still felt pretty snappy and modern. It’s aged very well and I was impressed a 15 year old computer booted up with zero issues.

Why buy?

https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-osx-mac-os-10-ppc

See #31 or #32. Burn an 8GB DL disk and you have an install disk. There are additonal options under those.

If you simply want to update to 10.5.8, do a Google search for the 10.5.8 combo update. Or you can just go to the Apple Menu>Software Update.

Lastly, bootable recovery partitions did not become a thing until Intel, Snow Leopard 10.6.

 

[DeltaMac]

I have recently reinstalled Leopard on my eMac:
1. Downloaded a full 10.5.6 install from this page. Burned a DVD DL from that dmg. Booted fine, to install the last version 10.5.6, using the option to "Archive and Install", which does what you want, to install the system. The existing files and apps are restored to the install, and you should boot to that 10.5.6 version.
Ran Software Update, which offered (among other updates) the combined 10.5.8 update. You should expect the same, even if you have installed OS X 10.5.1 - so your assumption is incorrect, as Apple still offers updates to the Leopard system, if needed.
2. The restore partition did not appear until OS X 10.7 (Lion) (Not in Snow Leopard, but a reinstall from a DVD was automatically the equivalent of an "archive and install" option, but that was the standard install on an already existing Snow Leopard system.

And, on Leopard, if you are connected to the internet, you can run Software Update, which (again) should offer the 10.5.8 combined updater. If you do that 10.5.8, be aware that it can take a long time to install (I have seen than take nearly an hour on some systems) so be patient to allow it to complete normally (it sits for a LONG time on "1 minute remaining". Anyway, be patient.

 

[macwant]

Wow, that was fast.

Okay so no need to buy. I thought 10.5.6 was the last update, but I now see 10.5.8 is. I’ll download that image and burn it to a dual layer DVD. I recently bought an external Apple Super Drive to rip CDs. It’ll be cool to utilize the DVD burning capability.

Thank you both!

 

[DearthnVader]

There is always the "poor man's recovery partition".

Just use Disk Utility to create a partition large enough to restore the Leopard install image to it.

Then you always have a bootable Leopard installer for any Mac with Firewire.

 

[Project Alice]

1) If I buy a 10.5 install disk, I’m assuming there’s zero chance of upgrading to 10.5.6 over the internet if the disk is 10.5.1. Is this a correct assumption?

For the record, at the time of writing the update servers for Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) are also still up and working. It's possible to install 10.4 retail and update all the way to 10.4.11 and other updates, directly from software update. Same applies for Leopard obviously. This is unfortunately not true for Panther and older, but the updates are still on the macintosh garden.

 

[DeltaMac]

Just to clarify about Leopard: the last full installer version (the retail installer DVD) is Mac OS X 10.5.6.
There was no Leopard full installer (DVD) newer than that.
The last system software update (last version number change) is for 10.5.8