How to reinstall a G4 iMac without CDs?

Question

I have got iMac power Mac G4 which I wanted to reinstall. I followed a Youtube video to do so, now my machine boots to a command prompt.

How can I proceed from here?

PS: I don't have any install CDs/DVDs.

While vaguely I can tell you what I did was Ctrl + s,then on command prompt I used few commands — Rishab, Oct 11 '20 at 14:20
Can you share the link to the YT video you've used? Also, run diskutil list at the prompt and then share a photo (not a video) on which the result of this is clearly visible. — nohillside, Oct 11 '20 at 14:27
Without knowing what exactly you did to get to the state you are it will be very difficult to find solutions here. Might be easier to get installer disks from eBay etc as proposed below. — nohillside, Oct 11 '20 at 14:51
@nohillside is there any minimum requirement for installing 10.5.8 leopard. — Rishab, Oct 11 '20 at 14:57
The video just explains how to reset an admin password. If you followed the instructions there your system should reboot easily. — nohillside, Oct 11 '20 at 15:41

Allan · Answer 1 · 2020-10-07T21:39:13.197

4

Before you do anything, you need to obtain the install disks. The latest version that was supported was OS X 10.5.8 (Leopard).

I don't recommend downloading them from a torrent site or from an unknown person off the Internet. Your best bet would be to obtain the genuine installer disks from eBay, Craigslist, GumTree, etc. If you have the inclination, you can attempt to install FreeBSD on that G4 (I installed it on a G5 XServe)

Don't wipe your disk until you know you have a working installer. And even if you do have a working installer, make a backup, preferably an image using dd or another cloning tool, of that hard drive. If things go sideways, you'll have a way to get back to a working machine. Ideally, I would use a different drive and put the original away for safekeeping.

edited Oct 07 '20 at 21:39

answered Oct 07 '20 at 21:30

Allan

101,432

Thanks Allan , I am not very tech for Mac OS.I made a mistake was watching some YouTube video how to do.now machine doesn’t work basically it goes in command prompt I can run commands but it doesn’t goes to the interface what I have before. – Rishab Oct 11 '20 at 10:53
It happens... *a lot! Unfortunately, your options are now limited to getting the original disks from somewhere like eBay. It's really no different than Windows or Linux/BSD. The only difference is the prevalence of (older OSes like 95 or XP) restore disks are easy to come by and Linux and the BSDs are archived on the Internet. Apple just makes it hard to obtain. Just for future reference, before erasing, you need to have your install disks in your possession no matter how easy they are to obtain. Test* the restore procedure before erasing. – Allan Oct 11 '20 at 16:00
Ping me from my profile, I may have something... – Allan Oct 11 '20 at 16:03
How do I open the cd drive from command prompt – Rishab Oct 11 '20 at 16:03
diskutil eject /dev/diskX where X is the identifier of your CD/DVD drive. Also, if you click and hold your mouse while powering it on, it should eject it. – Allan Oct 11 '20 at 16:16
Is any way to find what would be X in from root – Rishab Oct 11 '20 at 16:39
diskutil list look for CD/DVD or "removable" – Allan Oct 11 '20 at 17:17

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 12 '20 at 23:01

If you can get hold of another Mac from the same era running a compatible OSX version, you can boot the G4 in target mode and link the two Macs with FireWire. Then use something like CarbonCopyCloner to duplicate the system etc onto the G4. I have done this using an Intel iMac running 10.5 as source and a G5 PowerMac as target. Since 10.5 is a "fat" install there was no issue with different architectures.

How to reinstall a G4 iMac without CDs?

2 Answers2