Need to create a bootable drive for Leopard

[Giuanniello]

For some weird reason the old Mini optical drive doesn't read the Leopard installer as well as the SnowLeopard one, I know there are tools to create a SnowLeopard image on an external drive but is there any way to also create a Leopard one or reliable instructions on how to do it?

I tried to install Lion with the Mini in Target mode through an old MBPro with Snow onto it but after reboot I get the stop signal telling me the machine can't boot from that drive so I formatted again whilst in Target mode but can't install Leopard because it's an older version than the one installed on the machine I connected the Mini to and now I think the only solution, besides creating another disk which I can't since I have no DL DVD to burn, is to use an external drive like an usb card, any idea how to create it?

Grazie

 

[xaosnox]

Do you know if your Leopard installer supports Intel? Have you ever had Leopard installed on that Mini before? It may not be supported.

I have a G5 that's running Leopard (PPC) and I have disk images of the original install media. (I have no idea where the original disks are. Good thing I'm just about to back the whole thing up!) I could look at them and see if there's some way I could get them onto a disk image that would be transferable to a USB drive. It should be a lot easier than dealing with the new OSes.

Before I look into it, can you post your Mini's model ID? I don't want to pursue a lost cause. The whole endeavor seems a little counter productive. Snow Leopard was the pinnacle of Mac OS X, IMO. I don't know why you'd want to run Leopard, but if you're sure you want to, I may be able to help.

 

[Giuanniello]

Do you know if your Leopard installer supports Intel? Have you ever had Leopard installed on that Mini before? It may not be supported.

I have a G5 that's running Leopard (PPC) and I have disk images of the original install media. (I have no idea where the original disks are. Good thing I'm just about to back the whole thing up!) I could look at them and see if there's some way I could get them onto a disk image that would be transferable to a USB drive. It should be a lot easier than dealing with the new OSes.

Before I look into it, can you post your Mini's model ID? I don't want to pursue a lost cause. The whole endeavor seems a little counter productive. Snow Leopard was the pinnacle of Mac OS X, IMO. I don't know why you'd want to run Leopard, but if you're sure you want to, I may be able to help.

Your offer is very kind and appreciated but let me first tell you, the Mini is an A1176 to whom I switched the original 1.83Ghz CPU to a 2.33 one and it is seen as a Mini 2,1 model, RAM is 3GB and firmware something like 1.3 or alike.

I have home the MBPro of a friend to whom I had to install a new hard drive and as such I installed Snow Leopard if I recall correct, through this I mounted the Mini as Target drive through firewire and installed the OS onto it after failed attempts through its own DVD player, very strangely it didn't even read the original Snow Leopard disk, the Leopard one went fine till a certain point at which the installation got interrupted and when I menage to do so through the firewire connection after reboot I got the stop sign which is strange since I recall this computer running Leopard with no problems.

Now I will give it another try before I have to give back the MBPro to my friend because my other only machine with a FW port is my old MBPro but it runs a newer os which will not allow me to install an old one and I have no other option than again try with the original SL disk or to figure how to create an USB drive with either SL, for which there is an app which does it all, or for Leopard with the DVD or ISO image I have but I found no instructions to perform this latter one since so far it seems there is no application to do it automatically like for newer OSs

Grazie

 

[Giuanniello]

Do you know if your Leopard installer supports Intel? Have you ever had Leopard installed on that Mini before? It may not be supported...

For some strange reason today morning the Snow Leopard disk worked flawlessly and the system is up, updated and running, now I will move to another forum to ask advise about how to make it suitable as a media server especially for music, I am already converting my FLAC archive to lossless m4a as to play through iTunes but I will probably need a software with more advanced features to take advantage of the audio files quality and to stream it to the stereo system through a dedicated DAC.

Grazie ancora for your attention

Giovanni

 

[xaosnox]

I'm glad to hear you got it figured out. Your original post led me to think that you wanted to install Leopard but your Mini would only read the Snow Leopard install media, which didn't make much sense. As far as setting it up as a file server for your music, that's easy to do by just turning on afp services in the File Sharing section of the Sharing Preference Pane and adding your music folder to the shared folders list. It won't do things like AirPlay, but you don't really need that.

As far as converting your FLAC library to lossless m4a files, I think Switch will do that. Not sure. It would be nice if you post back what you find here. It's good to have a repository of information for those of use who are not so excited about the direction Apple is going with it's OS. It breaks my heart. I loved OS X. macOS is not so useful and literally hurts my eyes with it's gauche colors, hideously ugly gradients, jarring animations, and relatively cryptic and amateurish GUI. Change just for the sake of change is never a good thing. Snow Leopard was the last OS they actually got working well before they released another pile of problems. They need to slow down and do things in the insanely great way that Steve Jobs demanded again.

 

[Giuanniello]

I'm glad to hear you got it figured out. Your original post led me to think that you wanted to install Leopard but your Mini would only read the Snow Leopard install media, which didn't make much sense. As far as setting it up as a file server for your music, that's easy to do by just turning on afp services in the File Sharing section of the Sharing Preference Pane and adding your music folder to the shared folders list. It won't do things like AirPlay, but you don't really need that.

As far as converting your FLAC library to lossless m4a files, I think Switch will do that. Not sure. It would be nice if you post back what you find here. It's good to have a repository of information for those of use who are not so excited about the direction Apple is going with it's OS. It breaks my heart. I loved OS X. macOS is not so useful and literally hurts my eyes with it's gauche colors, hideously ugly gradients, jarring animations, and relatively cryptic and amateurish GUI. Change just for the sake of change is never a good thing. Snow Leopard was the last OS they actually got working well before they released another pile of problems. They need to slow down and do things in the insanely great way that Steve Jobs demanded again.

HEllo,

yes, at first I thought I would install Leopard since the SL disk didn't get recognised by the optical drive but it luckily worked out

Now I have to put screws back on the frame and slide the lid back in place and then figure how to use it without a keyboard which is no big deal but the thing which will bother is the need to switch on the TV anytime I want to use it given I will be using a DVI to HDMI cable so that the Mini can sit next to the TV and stereo system.

As far as conversion I am using XLD which is very easy and complete, no issues till now but a lot of music buried into folders which I either will never listen to or not like so also time for autumn cleaning.

With regards to Apple, well, my first Mac was a Titanium 667, the it came a wonderful PowerMac Dual G4 and on and on and on but quality of the hardware now is comparable to consumer PC products and the urge to update the OS each and every year only lead to a lot of whistles and bells to attract more people so, at the end, Apple became another commercial brand with very nice design but poor innovation, their target is annual sales of iPhones and accessories so it's no surprise the Pro share is quite disappointed and looking at other beaches.

Fully understandable that a company has to make money but I guess many of those who were proud Apple users back in time feel betrayed and small bits like not being able to sync my books onto my iPad are convincing me that the extra I have to pay for a nice design is not worth, bye bye iPad, time to evaluate a Kindle just to read...