Roundabout, sort of.
OS X that came with the Mini installed and booted from the external Firewire drive.
Using the Firewire OS, which I'm gonna leave on there for emergency use, I was able to see the ex-Dell drive and format it for Mac.
Then I used the Tiger upgrade disc. It saw the Firewire OS and let me clean install right to the ex-Dell drive, so, all is well again.
Kind of dislike how they make the install so simple, that if something goes wrong, you really have no recourse. If I did not have a firewire drive to install OS X on, not sure what I could have done.
OS X never would boot from a disc, only the installer program, so I would have been unable to format my drive from Windows to Mac.
OS X that came with the Mini installed and booted from the external Firewire drive.
Using the Firewire OS, which I'm gonna leave on there for emergency use, I was able to see the ex-Dell drive and format it for Mac.
Then I used the Tiger upgrade disc. It saw the Firewire OS and let me clean install right to the ex-Dell drive, so, all is well again.
Kind of dislike how they make the install so simple, that if something goes wrong, you really have no recourse. If I did not have a firewire drive to install OS X on, not sure what I could have done.
OS X never would boot from a disc, only the installer program, so I would have been unable to format my drive from Windows to Mac.