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Resolved Can't find a way to boot from USB or CD on iBook G3/600 4,1

Gabryx86_64

Gabryx86_64

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 15, 2025
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I have recently bought a 600MHz iBook G3, the 14,1" 8MB VRam kind, and I have tried everything to put a fresh install of Tiger, or even something older, on it, from flashing the 4 Tiger CDs directly from the iBook (which i can't do anymore because updating to 10.2.8 with the Combo updater actually broke my finder and I cant even use OSX anymore except for the apps already pinned to the appbar), or flashing to USB a lot of installers with either TransMac or Raw HDD Tool, but nothing seems to work, and open firmware cant find either even though i have inserted them.
The only thing left to try is netbooting, but I need to find a way to have the netboot server run either on Windows or Linux because I don't have another Mac.
 
Those old PPC Macs require hardware specific installers. You are not able to boot from the CD by holding down C key while starting up?
 
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Plus, I did find online a dump of the cd set for my specific iBook, but I do not really want to burn all those CDs, and I don't know how I would flash it all on a single pendrive it it is even possible, also it is just 10.2, but it would solve the problem with my broken install and act as a fresh one. Also, thinking about it, I should try with a different flash drive.
 
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Gabryx86_64 said:
then today I'll search for a USB CD or DVD to buy writer since my one is broken and I'll see if it works
Click to expand...
That will be the same as installing from a USB flash drive. Your best bet is getting something with FireWire.

Gabryx86_64 said:
The only thing left to try is netbooting, but I need to find a way to have the netboot server run either on Windows or Linux because I don't have another Mac
Click to expand...
There are actually quite a bit of resources regarding doing this on Linux that I’ve ran into while setting up my netboot server. Mine is a Mac though, so I have no experience doing it on another OS.
 
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Project Alice said:
That will be the same as installing from a USB flash drive. Your best bet is getting something with FireWire.
Click to expand...
I meant to burn the discs from my computer, since I don't think the problem is in the combo drive of the iBook.
Although I could try using Firewire using adapters going from USB to Firewire 800 to Firewire 400.

Project Alice said:
There are actually quite a bit of resources regarding doing this on Linux that I’ve ran into while setting up my netboot server. Mine is a Mac though, so I have no experience doing it on another OS.
Click to expand...
If nothing works then I'll have to try that too.

I haven't found in the store I have gone to a disc burner, so I just bought some different brands of USB flash drives, but has expected, none of them worked.
The ones I've used are a 32GB Kingston DataTraveler 3.0 one, a 16GB MyMedia MyUSBDrive 2.0 one, and a 8GB GC Store Data Traveler Exodia 2.0 one, and like I have already said, none of these worked.
I will order some Firewire adapters and a USB DVD writer online.
 
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Also, do any of you know of a USB to Firewire adapter so that I can connect USB storage devices through Firewire that is cheap and available, since I can't find any on Amazon.
 
Do any of you know where I could find any of those, since I could find some CF card readers (although at a very high price)
but I could not find any drive enclosures on Amazon, Aliexpress, or Ebay.
 
I actually found something interesting, all discs but the Disc 1 of tiger can be read by MacOS 9 (I can't use OSX since finder is borked).
IDK if it's supposed to be this way since Disc 1 is bootable, but I'll try writing to a different CD.
 
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Ok so basically, I'm kind of a dumbass 😁.
I thought I couldn't boot from the CDs for some random reason, well the reason was that the first disc of 4 was like not working, either because I abused it too much through software or physically (don't ask questions).
Even though finder is still borked, putting in a blank CD asks what action I want to perform (and here I have to thank the previous owner for not setting open in finder as default, since then I would've needed to create another account and move the files from the other account to the new one from MacOS 9).
Right now I'm flashing, I hope it works time.

UPDATE:
It booted :) .

UPDATE 2:
I am finally running Tiger.
 
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Ohh on a side note check THIS 2.5” FW400 enclosure for 12.50 shipped :D That’s a pretty good deal as far as FW enclosures go. At that price I couldn’t pass it up.

Generally I recommend the Hitachi mini G-Drives as they’re aluminum, good build quality, have usb2.0-FW400 & 800 and can be found for under $30USD like THIS ONE.

Yet another thought was finding a cheap iBook g4 and using target disk mode to boot the iBook g3 media from.

But yeah, assuming the drives ok, cds should work great.
 
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Certificate of Excellence said:
Ohh on a side note check THIS 2.5” FW400 enclosure for 12.50 shipped :D That’s a pretty good deal as far as FW enclosures go. At that price I couldn’t pass it up.
Click to expand...
These prices do not apply for me since I am in Italy, so I have to pay more for shipping, but still 40 euros for the enclosure+shipping is better than the 50 euros for the Amazon one, so I'll keep it in mind when I eventually will buy one.
 
joevt said:
I bought most of my FireWire/USB drives from OWC but their selection of devices supporting FireWire has been greatly reduced. Now they only have this:
https://ca.macsales.com/item/OWC/ME3QHKIT0GB/
which support FireWire 800 and USB 3.0
For 2.5" drives, they had the Mercury On-The-Go Pro with USB 3.0 and FireWire 800.
Click to expand...
Just as an FYI, I have this enclosure and, for whatever reason is the only FireWire device I’ve ever seen that won’t boot a PPC Mac.
It’s actually been the boot drive for my TrueNAS server the past few years because of that. It’s a Mac Pro and there isn’t any space for an internal boot drive with my setup, and flash drives are extremely unreliable for that sort of thing.

Anyway, for PPC IIRC it appears bootable sometimes but not always, and hangs when you are able to select it. I actually emailed OWC about it and the only thing they’d tell me is they “don’t support” PowerPC Mac’s or Tiger/Leopard.
I don’t know if it has shoddy firmware or if it’s a purposeful thing but. Just wanted people to be aware of it.
Works fine for other stuff though.
 
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