MacMini G4 from 2005 Recovery in 2023

Hello there,

Well, I recovered an old MacMini G4 (model A1103 from 2005) from an electronics' bin in our warehouse. It has 512MB RAM, 80GB IDE HDD and 1,42GHz PowerPC G4 CPU. It has an old USB keyboard and USB mouse with just one single global button being the whole mouse.

Currently it runs OSX 10.4.11. I also obtained the password for the administrative account. The only thing I dont have is the original DVDs or CDs or whatever the OS source that came with. However I was able to download&burn a set of 4 CDs with 10.4.2 and also download&burn a DVD with "OSX 10.4 Tiger Retail DVD". Plus I also download@burn another DVD with PPC Mac OS 10.4.6 Installation. The legitimity and bootabiliy is unknown though.

Next I already replaced the original DVD reader/CD writer model CW-8123-C with a GSA-T20N DVD drive and confirmed it reads the discs in the current OS fine. Las thing to say, I have another fully operational hacintosh macbook made from a DELL Latitude 5400 laptop, available for creation of helpful CDs, DVDs, USBs etc. So I am ready and equipped to recover and reainstall the MacMini.

Now to my target! I want to boot from a CD/DVD or USB and IF that could be accomplished, I plan to replace the HDD with an adapter 44PIN IDE-to-mSATA SSD and put a clean installation on, 10.4.xx or 10.5.x.

Now the problem is that except from booting the current OS from the original HDD, I am not able to boot from any other source. When I try all those keys like R, T, N, C, O, F, Ctrl, Alt, Option, Shift and all of their known combinations to alter the boot sequence, it never works. And when I replace the working HDD with another known-to-be-good IDE 40GB HDD and try to boot from another source like one of those CDs/DVDs I always end up in a blue/purple-ish like screen with a folder icon with blinking questioner/macos face. I can only get to the OpenFirmware, it says Apple PowerMac 10,1 4.8.9f1 BootROM from 12/10/04. Resetting the NVRAM and all settings to default did not make any difference. Also commands like "0> boot cd:,\\:txbi" and its alterantives that I found during my googling, didnt work.

I know, there is no Recovery mode in 10.4.xx. nor a network/internet recovery anymore for those old devices. So only local boot sources are an option for me. So I insert a CD or DVD mentioned above and then go to change the boot disk in System Preferences. It sees the CD/DVD to be a bootable option as "Mac OS X Install DVD" next to the local HDD.After the restart it spins and reads for a while. But then it stops and the OS is loaded from the original 80GB HDD. If there is the other, non-Apple 40GB HDD present and I try some alternative boot key combo, it ends up in a blue/purple-ish like screen with a folder icon with blinking questioner/macos face again. I also tried the above with the origonal CD/DVD mechanic. Same result. I am now trying to create a bootable USB with Tiger OS X. And then try to boot from it.

I would kindly like to ask for any suggestions about how to proceed if there is somebody there still in 2023 wiling to play and help.

Regards, George