[geeks] DVD install of MacOS 10.5.3 or 10.5.4

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Sat, Jul 26, 2008 at 01:51:29PM -0400, Phil Stracchino wrote:

> Can't help there, but ...   on this subject, does anyone have a set of
> 10.4 CD install media you're no longer using?  I'm accumulating a
> sizeable list of ways to burn OSX CDs that don't result in a bootable
> install CD.

They were pretty rare. You had to buy a DVD and then send it in with
$10 for postage and handling. 


> 
> Alternately, should I be able to replace the internal CD in a Bondi with
> just *any* ATA DVD drive and expect it to work?  I'm guessing it'd be
> far easier to get my hands on a 10.4 DVD than CDs.

If you are talking about a Bondi Blue iMac, I thought 10.3 was the last
version that would run on them. To get Tiger to run, you have to install
OS9, copy the firmware updates to the hard disk and run them from the hard
disk. Then you install XPOSTFACTO on the OS9 hard disk.

I've never tried it, but I think XPOSTFACTO will install OSX from a USB
DVD drive. It always boots OS9 (or an early version of OSX), fakes the
firmware and then boots OSX with the faked firmware. If it does not work
with a DVD drive, try a hard drive. 

As for installing a DVD drive, forget it. The original iMacs used a laptop
type CD drive with a strange interface cable. Some of them had the same
IDE controller chip that could not support 66mHz DMA, so PC hard drives
bigger than 10 gig, or IDE CD drives faster than 16x, or DVD drives
faster than 4x will not work on those models. 

Apple drives had special firmware that was fixed at 33mHz DMA. 

BTW, it also needs to be upgraded to 256m RAM, which is two 128m PC100 SODIMMS.

Check that out though because seemingly identical models went to PC133
memory and not all PC133 memory will work at 100mHz.

YMMV.

Geoff.


-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM