Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

lepidotós

macrumors 6502a
Aug 29, 2021
677
750
Marinette, Arizona
A very, very few of the old Macs (such as my Sawtooth (AGP) G4) CANNOT be booted off a USB stick, UNLESS you find the internal path to the port, and then provide that path to the Mac when you boot.
Huh, that's weird. My Sawtooth boots from USB just fine from the boot picker, that's how I installed 9.2 and Tiger on it when I got it. I've had most of the issues with USB boot on computers with USB 2.0 (G4 laptops and my iMac G5).
Might be a pre/post speed dump thing too, mine is from 2000... something to look into I guess.​
 
  • Like
Reactions: Amethyst1

PowerPCFan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 5, 2022
308
106
I don't know what happened. When I booted the Mac from the DVD, it didn't panic, it worked. here's a photo of the 10.4 installer. It said it wouldn't install because I had Leopard, so I clicked Archive current OS and install Tiger. This worked, but I didn't dual boot because my HDD only had 12GB left.
 

Attachments

  • IMG_20220313_093242.jpg
    IMG_20220313_093242.jpg
    923.1 KB · Views: 83

Certificate of Excellence

macrumors 6502a
Feb 9, 2021
945
1,458
Might be simpler/safer to just find an old HDD to put in the tower?
I think to partition that drive you’ll want to boot from an installer disc and use Disk Utility. I think that should work but my memory of the capabilities of older versions is… fading ;-)
This is what I'd do as well. Keep Leopard on the 80gb drive and add a 2nd hdd and install Tiger to that. You can format the new drive to APM/extended via diskutility on the tiger disk (or from the leopard installation) and then install. 1.2.3 done. Best of luck to you.
 

PowerPCFan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 5, 2022
308
106
For some reason, it won't boot anymore. When I remove the dvd, I get the blinking folder. Should I boot it into Target Disk Mode and connect it to a PowerBook G4 to recover data? The hard drive still has stuff on it, just not bootable.
 

PowerPCFan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 5, 2022
308
106
Well, I technically didn't fix it, but I installed Tiger on a second hard drive and it worked. I still can't boot off of the original hard drive, but it still has stuff on it and works, so I can access that stuff while booted off of the new hard drive.
 

PowerPCFan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 5, 2022
308
106
It used to work on Tiger and Leopard, but when I did a reinstall it failed right at the end and made it unbootable. It wouldn't let me try again without erasing the drive, which I did not want to do. Then I did the Archive old OS and Install option. This time, it was successful and seemed to have worked. When I booted it, I started to hear the optical drive, and it booted from the CD. I thought to myself, Do I have to change startup disk? Anhway, I held option at boot, ejected the CD, and there were no drives!

Would the drive settings be wrong if they worked before? I think the drive is set to Master, because it was the only drive in the computer and it came with it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: lepidotós

barbu

macrumors 65816
Jul 8, 2013
1,263
1,052
wpg.mb.ca
It used to work on Tiger and Leopard, but when I did a reinstall it failed right at the end and made it unbootable. It wouldn't let me try again without erasing the drive, which I did not want to do. Then I did the Archive old OS and Install option. This time, it was successful and seemed to have worked. When I booted it, I started to hear the optical drive, and it booted from the CD. I thought to myself, Do I have to change startup disk? Anhway, I held option at boot, ejected the CD, and there were no drives!

Would the drive settings be wrong if they worked before? I think the drive is set to Master, because it was the only drive in the computer and it came with it.
If you have disc drive, that’s at least two on the IDE bus, so it might be worth checking and setting them both to Cable
Select. Can’t hurt to try. The drives “should” have the jumper diagram somewhere on them…
 
  • Like
Reactions: lepidotós

PowerPCFan

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Mar 5, 2022
308
106
If you have disc drive, that’s at least two on the IDE bus, so it might be worth checking and setting them both to Cable
Select. Can’t hurt to try. The drives “should” have the jumper diagram somewhere on them…
I Have an ATA/33, ATA/66, and ATA/100 bus on my Power Mac g4 motherboard. I have one drive on each. Does this help? I have the MDD power mac G4.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.