HT201624: Vintage and obsolete products
Learn about Vintage and obsolete products
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All replies
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Helpful answers
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Sep 18, 2014 9:19 AM in response to Forzennyby Ralph Landry1,★HelpfulYou have to use the CD for OS X versions before 10.7 so there is no real option for you. You could have the optical drive serviced or replaced,dthat would be the most direct approach.
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Sep 18, 2014 10:58 AM in response to Ralph Landry1by Forzenny,Okay well, guess I gotta find a Panther disc lol.
If I try a USB DVD drive, will that work too?
Also, thanks for the (very) fast answer
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Sep 18, 2014 11:11 AM in response to Forzennyby Allan Jones,If I try a USB DVD drive, will that work too?
Could be a problem. Most PowerPC Macs like the iMac G3 need to boot from a Firewire drive, not USB. Even the few PowerPC Macs that are "supposed" to be USB bootable often fail. Is your iMac new enough to have FireWire ports? It needs to be a "DV" version (with slot-loading optical drive) iMac to have FireWire. Easiest way is to look at your ports. A Firewire port looks like this:
Another thing to try is clean the existing optical drive. Slot-loaders get dirty. A drive cleaning disk is usually between US$5 and $15 at most computer, office supply, and home entertainment retailers. It is surprising how many optical drives are pronounced dead by Apple service technicians but come back to live after a cleaning.
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Sep 18, 2014 11:26 AM in response to Allan Jonesby Forzenny,This computer is from 2001, judging by the date of the last files created. It has Firewire ports too
Edit: The DVD drive seems to take discs fully now but stills ejects them without reading them
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Sep 18, 2014 5:32 PM in response to Forzennyby MichelPM,The read/write lenses on the internal optical drive, probably, are no longer working.
If your iMac model does have FireWire, you can still get FireWire optical drives and hard drives here.
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Sep 18, 2014 5:37 PM in response to Forzennyby MichelPM,If you have access to amazon.com, you can find the proper retail OS X Panther version there.
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nav_search_go?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords= OS+X+10.3+Panther
