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Power Mac G5 help!

Sickminecraft45

Sickminecraft45

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 31, 2022
18
7
Hi, I need help with my Power Mac G5! I tried to make a bootable USB for Leopard but when I go into the boot selector, the drive doesn't come up, when I try to launch the installer from Mac OS X, it just reboots into the OS, and when I try to boot into it from open firmware, it just shows the prohibited sign. What can I do!
 
Sickminecraft45 said:
Hi, I need help with my Power Mac G5! I tried to make a bootable USB for Leopard but when I go into the boot selector, the drive doesn't come up, when I try to launch the installer from Mac OS X, it just reboots into the OS, and when I try to boot into it from open firmware, it just shows the prohibited sign. What can I do!
Click to expand...
On PowerPC Macs USB booting only works from openfirmware, it wouldn't show up in the boot picker.

But it looks like you did attempt to use openfirmware. From personal experience, USB booting Mac OS X on PPC Macs is iffy. I've had it work once or twice but normally I am greeted by the same prohibited sign you are seeing. If you do not have access to a FireWire drive to use, I would recommend burning a DVD and booting off that.
 
Project Alice said:
On PowerPC Macs USB booting only works from openfirmware, it wouldn't show up in the boot picker.

But it looks like you did attempt to use openfirmware. From personal experience, USB booting Mac OS X on PPC Macs is iffy. I've had it work once or twice but normally I am greeted by the same prohibited sign you are seeing. If you do not have access to a FireWire drive to use, I would recommend burning a DVD and booting off that.
Click to expand...
I do have some dual-layer DVDs but the mac doesn't detect the blank DVD and when I try to eject the blank DVD, the mac refreshes the screen and closes all apps!
 
Now I have a different problem! when I type in boot ud:,\\:tbxi instead of coming up the prohibited sigh, open firmware refuses to detect the USB!
 
B S Magnet said:
What I mean is: what method did you use to make a bootable USB? Did you use a third-party copying application, or did you use the scan/restore function in Apple’s Disk Utility (from another Mac, ostensibly) to copy the image over to the USB drive?
Click to expand...
I used disk utility to restore the image to the USB on the same mac as I have 10.3.0 Panther installed on it.
 
Sickminecraft45 said:
I used disk utility to restore the image to the USB on the same mac as I have 10.3.0 Panther installed on it.
Click to expand...
You can get the 'minimal' Leopard here (download 36) - it fits on a single layer DVD:

Mac OS X for PPC (Mac OS 10) - Macintosh Garden

Mac OS X Internal Edition - (Download #1) Mac OS X Public Beta System clock must be set before May 2001. Mac OS X Cheetah 10.0 - (Download #2 - #5) 10.0?
macintoshgarden.org macintoshgarden.org

Or try using a different USB stick - it's a common problem that some refuse to work.

The other, long way would be to reinstall Panther (assuming you have the install disks), splitting the HDD into two partitions with Disk Utility first, then once finished restore the Leopard dmg to the second partition and boot from that.
 
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Dronecatcher said:
You can get the 'minimal' Leopard here (download 36) - it fits on a single layer DVD:

Mac OS X for PPC (Mac OS 10) - Macintosh Garden

Mac OS X Internal Edition - (Download #1) Mac OS X Public Beta System clock must be set before May 2001. Mac OS X Cheetah 10.0 - (Download #2 - #5) 10.0?
macintoshgarden.org macintoshgarden.org

Or try using a different USB stick - it's a common problem that some refuse to work.

The other, long way would be to reinstall Panther (assuming you have the install disks), splitting the HDD into two partitions with Disk Utility first, then once finished restore the Leopard dmg to the second partition and boot from that.
Click to expand...
I'll give the third option a try as I have Panther burned on 3 CDs! I hope it works! I paid $20 AUD for my Power Mac G5 at my local thrift store! It was very dirty and I gave it a good clean! It is the upgraded 2003 version with dual 2 GHz G5 CPUs and it has dual 160GB HDDs and 4GB of RAM. When I got it it had the flashing folder icon because the HDD was blank.
 
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Sickminecraft45 said:
I'll give the third option a try as I have Panther burned on 3 CDs! I hope it works! I paid $20 AUD for my Power Mac G5 at my local thrift store! It was very dirty and I gave it a good clean! It is the upgraded 2003 version with dual 2 GHz G5 CPUs and it has dual 160GB HDDs and 4GB of RAM. When I got it it had the flashing folder icon because the HDD was blank.
Click to expand...
Sounds like you got a great deal!

If you have two HDDs why not restore Leopard to that 2nd drive?
 
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Dronecatcher said:
Sounds like you got a great deal!

If you have two HDDs why not restore Leopard to that 2nd drive?
Click to expand...
I booted up the Panther CD and I split the HDD into two partitions. I installed Panther on one and restored the Leopard image on the other but the Leopard partition doesn't show up in the boot selector!

EDIT: I am finally on the Leopard installer! All I had to do was to boot into the Leopard partition through the boot selector in system preferences!
 
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Sickminecraft45 said:
I booted up the Panther CD and I split the HDD into two partitions. I installed Panther on one and restored the Leopard image on the other but the Leopard partition doesn't show up in the boot selector!

EDIT: I am finally on the Leopard installer! All I had to do was to boot into the Leopard partition through the boot selector in system preferences!
Click to expand...
Winner winner chicken dinner. Great job :) Also, very nice score. I have the same machine. It lives happily out on my garage bench serving up occasional games for the kiddos amongst other things. If you are ever interested in linux, @wicknix put together Lubuntu remix 16.04 and runs great on these PMG5s.
 
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