Thread

iMac G4 minimum OS?

iMac G4 minimum OS? PowerPC 30 posts May 29, 2012 — Jul 3, 2012

#1 Tue, 29 May 2012 - 03:50

I have an iMac G4 that i picked up from the hamvention, it fires up but it goes kernel panic please turn off your computer screen on startup.

So, i grabbed my OS9.2 disk and its not recognized by the "option" menu.

Then i grabbed my OS10.4 retail disk and itll startup so far and panic saying no driver for this platform PowerMac 4,2 meaning the 10.4.0 retail copy doesnt have the proper kernel for this system.

What is the minimum OS?

#2 Tue, 29 May 2012 - 03:59

Processor speed?

I handled some 700 and 800MHz ones that have been allegedly turned into iLamps. Those handle 9.2.2.

Have you tried Jaguar? Those things came out in the Jaguar era.

#3 Tue, 29 May 2012 - 04:18

I have retail jaguar as well, it dont see the disk present at all. It will only see my Tiger disk.

i started open firmware, I get this:

PowerMac4,2 4.5.0f4

So, I tried to start it up off the HDD again in verbose mode, I get some strange Cache too big for physical memory (256mb) and kernel panic immediately after that. I have no idea what is installed, thats how the machine was when I got it. panic right away on startup. Thats what verbose said.

But i cannot get it to take an OS as it wont see my OS9 disk, my jaguar disk, but it sees my Tiger disk however it kicks it out saying no support for PowerMac4,2

#4 Tue, 29 May 2012 - 04:20

Hi,

Could it be bad RAM? Not enough RAM? Bad cache memory?

c

#5 Tue, 29 May 2012 - 04:21

i have no idea. thats what I am trying to find out.

#6 Tue, 29 May 2012 - 05:57

Do you have a hardware test cd?

#7 Tue, 29 May 2012 - 06:35

i think you got a ram issue, throw in at least 256megs of something else, pc133 tiger needs 256meg min... also maybe check to see if they may have tried to over clock it...

#8 Tue, 29 May 2012 - 13:04

The Tiger Retail DVD will actually boot on 128MB - I've booted my Beige on 128 with the Tiger DVD (and XPostFacto). Just don't count on it being quick though.

#9 Tue, 29 May 2012 - 13:35

The earliest model boots 9.2.2 and 10.1.2. The latest doesn't boot 9 at all.

http://www.everymac.com/ultimate-mac-lookup/?search_keywords=PowerMac4,2

#10 Tue, 29 May 2012 - 18:52

Not easy, but you can crack it opened and remove the HDD, probably swap with a working unit.

The Imac G4 is not easy to work at, and you will need thermal grease to put things back together :

viewtopic.php?f=2&t=18405

Probably the HDD is not the issue, i guess the problem is elsewhere (maybe overheating issue like mine) but i tested both the HDD and DVD driver outside the Imac (with my Powermac G4) ...the Imac cannot be operated more than 5 minutes without thermal grease or you will get into trouble. :'(

#11 Wed, 30 May 2012 - 02:00

Hard to say if my tiger is retail or not. Its a burned copy someone gave me. (i know, not legal, but its not the scope of this forum). it booted on every other system I have had. all except for the imac G5.

Gonna try a USB drive, maybe the internal drive has an issue reading the driver library. If that dont work, time to crack it open.

#12 Wed, 30 May 2012 - 02:41

My 10.4.6 retail disc boots my Luxo just fine.

#13 Wed, 30 May 2012 - 02:52

Mine disc isnt 10.4.6

it is 10.4.0. If there was a way to slipstream like you can in the M$ world then I would do it.

#14 Wed, 30 May 2012 - 05:48

Hard to say if my tiger is retail or not. Its a burned copy someone gave me. (i know, not legal, but its not the scope of this forum). it booted on every other system I have had. all except for the imac G5.
Gonna try a USB drive, maybe the internal drive has an issue reading the driver library. If that dont work, time to crack it open.

I'd say its a restore disc - given that the last iMac G4s shipped in 2004, and Tiger came out in 2005, and supports all iMac G4s, I can't understand why a retail Tiger DVD wouldn't have the drivers for yours.

#15 Wed, 30 May 2012 - 06:25

The Tiger Retail DVD will actually boot on 128MB - I've booted my Beige on 128 with the Tiger DVD (and XPostFacto). Just don't count on it being quick though.

I once booted an Rev. C iMac G3 tray loader into Mac OS X 10.1.4 with 32 MB of RAM!Needless to say, it was REEEEALLLYYY slow! But it worked!

I didn't time it, but I think it took like 3 minutes to start up completely.

This little tangent (cotangent?) doesn't help techknight with his G4, though.

Anyway, back on topic:

I agree with LCGuy; it's probably is a restore disk. Perhaps booting the G4 into Target Disk Mode and installing from another PPC-based Mac on which the disk will boot will work. Has that been attempted?

If you can successfully boot up that other Mac using the installation on the G4's drive, you can update it to the latest release (10.4.11), which will definitely support this machine.

c

#16 Thu, 31 May 2012 - 03:55

Bad laser in the DVD drive i think. I tried to fire up ubuntu I had burned on a DVD and it complained about finding the medium. Bingo.

I tried starting up the Apple Service Diagnostic CD and not DVD, it booted all the way into Mac OS X.

I cant get my USB DVD drive to boot. Shows up the disk in the drive picker on startup, but if i click it, it just goes back and refreshes the screen. I guess they dont boot from USB?

#17 Thu, 31 May 2012 - 04:43

removed the ubuntu disk out of the main drive, and it let me startup tiger from the USB DVD. what do ya know, it booted. Leopard is installed on the main HD.

I added a 256 stick on the bottom, and the machine booted fine from the HDD, it didnt panic so someone must have removed the RAM which is why it was panicing. However, it only sees that stick as 128mb PC100, its a 256MB PC133 high density chip.

#18 Thu, 31 May 2012 - 05:01

I'm told that CD/DVD drives can indicate when their death knell is coming because the DVD reading capability goes out the window.

Those LED diodes don't last forever.

As far as booting from USB, I believe it was Tiger that enabled that.

(FWIW, I installed Jaguar on 64MB of memory on an iMac G4. A little slow, but unusable.)

#19 Fri, 1 Jun 2012 - 02:16

Well someone hacked in leopard. So that told me at one point it had more ram, but it was pulled before I got the unit. As it wouldnt startup. Stuck another stick of RAM in it, and it started up what was on the HDD.

It seems to run ok, but i may go back to tiger. Havent decided.

#20 Sat, 2 Jun 2012 - 01:57

Any iLamp can boot the retail 10.4 disc; all but the VERY last revision can boot the retail 10.3 disc. (The last revision came out just after 10.3's release, and came with 10.3.0, but it requires its own special restore disc, not the retail 10.3.)

Only the very first generation can run any version of OS 9, and it requires its own special restore disc, it will not accept ANY other OS 9.2 install disc, from any other system. (Trust me on this one, I'm still trying to track down the iMac G4 Restore Disc set with 9.2... I thought I found one on another forum, but it's for the 15" iLamp, and the 17" iLamp I have needs even a DIFFERENT restore disc, since it was released a few months later and has a slightly better graphics chip.)

#21 Sat, 2 Jun 2012 - 16:59

The eMac "boot any" OS 9 disc should work with those too, since the hardware is very similar.

#22 Wed, 13 Jun 2012 - 01:24

I dont think this one is OS9 compatible. it has the Geforce 4MX and it doesnt see any OS9 CD at all in the startup option key menu. Funny though because it has the same EMC number as the OS9 compatible one. But this one clearly isnt. I assume.

#23 Wed, 13 Jun 2012 - 17:10

I dont think this one is OS9 compatible. it has the Geforce 4MX and it doesnt see any OS9 CD at all in the startup option key menu. Funny though because it has the same EMC number as the OS9 compatible one. But this one clearly isnt. I assume.

If it is a 17" 800MHz G4 iMac with a Geforce 4MX then it should boot OS9. The version which does not boot OS9 has a Geforce 2MX video chip -- it seems to have been a bit of a downgrade, while increasing the minimum OS.

#24 Thu, 14 Jun 2012 - 04:24

this one is a 15" not a 17" I cant remember the video chip, might be a Geforce 2. I cant remember. lol. I have to pull it back out again.

#25 Fri, 15 Jun 2012 - 00:57

Apple made three imac G4's with the PowerMac4,2 identifier -

iMac G4 700 - M8672LL/A - NVIDIA GeForce2 MX - 15" TFT - Pre-Installed MacOS: 9.2.2 & X 10.1.2

iMac G4 700 - M8535LL/A - NVIDIA GeForce2 MX - 15" TFT - Pre-Installed MacOS: 9.2.2 & X 10.1.2

imac G4 800 - M9105LL/A - NVIDIA GeForce2 MX - 15" TFT - Pre-Installed MacOS: X 10.2.3

RAM Type: PC133 SDRAM Min. RAM Speed: 10 ns

Although Apple's original specifications stated that it shipped with PC100 RAM, Apple later warned that "PC100 RAM is not to be used with iMac (Flat Panel) computers and may create performance and reliability issues".

#26 Fri, 15 Jun 2012 - 04:58

10.2.3, this explains why it wont see my retail 10.2.0 disk.

ok that answers everything then ;-)

#27 Wed, 20 Jun 2012 - 14:33

Apple made three imac G4's with the PowerMac4,2 identifier -
imac G4 800 - M9105LL/A - NVIDIA GeForce2 MX - 15" TFT - Pre-Installed MacOS: X 10.2.3

I think just got one of these... firmware is 4.5.0f4

I tried booting a custom Mac Utilities CD with Mac OS ROM 10.2.1 on it. It loads the file but won't start the system.

Nor will it recognize any Mac OS 9 system folder as bootable in the Mac OS X startup disk control panel.

Is ROM version 9.8.1 (from a Mac Test Pro CD) the only one that will boot OS 9 on this model? Anybody out there have this?

It's unfair that it can't boot Mac OS 9, since it's the same hardware as the ones that can.

#28 Wed, 20 Jun 2012 - 14:44

12" AlBook came out in January 2003 - Apple announced, from memory, months before that all Jan/2003 onwards Macs would only run OS X natively.

Also, you won't find any files from a MacTest Pro disc on here - those files aren't meant to be distributed to the general public, and as such, linking to them is against the rules of this forum

#29 Tue, 3 Jul 2012 - 21:53

As far as OS 9 goes, I strongly suspect that if your iMac IS OS 9 compatible, you would need a system specific restore disk. My PowerMac G4 MDD has the same problem. It won't even recognize a retail disc for either 9.1 or 9.2.2 (not sure exactly which one I have).I think almost all of the iMac G4's are OS 9 compatible in some way, shape, or form. I know for a fact that my MDD was the absolute last OS 9 compatible Mac, and it was made in 2004.

#30 Tue, 3 Jul 2012 - 22:13

I know for a fact that my MDD was the absolute last OS 9 compatible Mac, and it was made in 2004.

You mean, it was the last desktop Macintosh that Apple made that could boot natively into OS 9! I have the last laptop they made that can boot natively into OS 9 and that was discontinued in September 2003, the 1Ghz G4 Titanium Powerbook.

It wasn't the last machine compatible with OS 9 as many after that can run OS 9 Classic under OS X 10.4.11 or lower.

Pedantic I know, but an important distinction.