Roll Back iMacs to Tiger

[d_and_n5000]

My school is getting in a shipment of iMacs this coming Monday. The media specialist would prefer that all of these would be rolled back to Tiger so that the entire library has the same operating system. We've been doing the OS 9.2/10.2/10.4 shuffle for years, and Tiger is as high as our iBooks will go, so we would like to standardize on Tiger for all of our machines if at all possible.

We asked our Apple Rep if it would be possible to do this with the August 2007 revision, which is what we ordered, and he replied that we wouldn't. However, we have an August 2007 iMac already here that came preloaded with Leopard that we were able to roll back. Because they are of the same revision, did the rep not know what he was talking about and give us incorrect information, or is it actually impossible to do this?

Thanks for any help.

 

[Eidorian]

The August 2007 Aluminium iMacs can have OS X 10.4 Tiger installed off of their original DVDs or imaged/cloned off of another identical iMac.

You should be able to do the same on the Early 2008 models as well as long as they have the ATi 2400 or 2600.

 

[nick9191]

It is possible with the August 2007 iMacs, as they originally came with tiger. But why did you buy the August 2007 ones instead of the April 2008 ones? Or was it for that very reason?

 

[d_and_n5000]

It is possible with the August 2007 iMacs, as they originally came with tiger. But why did you buy the August 2007 ones instead of the April 2008 ones? Or was it for that very reason?

You just hit the nail on the head. After dealing with the shuffle for so long, she's ready to just have one operating system everywhere, and save time and energy for everybody - herself, teachers and students. She wasn't very happy when she heard that we couldn't put Tiger on them. Now that we know we can, we're happy again.

OK, now another question. How would we go about copying hard drives? What we think we're going to do is set one up exactly how we like it, and then just copy that hard drive onto the rest. Is it simply a matter of booting up the original in Target Disk Mode and then using Migration Assistant on the rest, or is there something more complicated involved? And if we went with this route, would we then be able to do this across multiple product lines(so take the settings and whatnot on the one iMac and use Migration Assistant on, say, MacBooks)?

This would be a massive, huge help if this were true.

 

[Eidorian]

If you have a standard set of applications and the proper licensing then you can just create images using NetRestore if you don't have an OS X Server for NetInstall imaging.

It's so much easier to make a master image and just blast it across the computers in minutes.

 

[sfroom]

OK, now another question. How would we go about copying hard drives? What we think we're going to do is set one up exactly how we like it, and then just copy that hard drive onto the rest. Is it simply a matter of booting up the original in Target Disk Mode and then using Migration Assistant on the rest, or is there something more complicated involved? And if we went with this route, would we then be able to do this across multiple product lines(so take the settings and whatnot on the one iMac and use Migration Assistant on, say, MacBooks)?

The migration assistant would work as you suggest, and would work without any problems on Macbooks.

However, as far as I know the only way to invoke the migration assistant is to do a fresh installation of the operating system. So it would require an "Erase and Install" with Tiger disks on each system, and accordingly would be time consuming.

Additionally, if you're using any software with discrete software licenses, like Microsoft Office, then this method will not work because when more than one computer on the network was running Microsoft Word, for example, it would force other users to save and quit.

 

[d_and_n5000]

The migration assistant would work as you suggest, and would work without any problems on Macbooks.

However, as far as I know the only way to invoke the migration assistant is to do a fresh installation of the operating system. So it would require an "Erase and Install" with Tiger disks on each system, and accordingly would be time consuming.

Additionally, if you're using any software with discrete software licenses, like Microsoft Office, then this method will not work because when more than one computer on the network was running Microsoft Word, for example, it would force other users to save and quit.

That isn't a problem - we were planning on erasing and installing anywho. We didn't do that on the one iMac we already have, and it wasn't the smartest. A lot of the Leopard-only apps are just sitting there and we can't use them. That's why I'm asking this now, so we can get started ASAP, and not in June when we can actually start putting them in.

And we were only planning on doing settings and then throwing ARD on them, then using that to install all the software once the machines were in the lab. I'm not entirely sure if we're going to wipe the rest of the computers as well, but we might. The only thing really keeping us from doing that is a PITA Rosetta Stone license thing on the iBooks; we would have to call them and tell them that we were going to be wiping the hard drives and therefore to let us use the licenses again, and their customer support sucks.

If you have a standard set of applications and the proper licensing then you can just create images using NetRestore if you don't have an OS X Server for NetInstall imaging.

It's so much easier to make a master image and just blast it across the computers in minutes.

I really, really, REALLY like that idea.

That may have just earned you mega karma points.

Thanks a billion!