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Booting from a USB-CD / DVD / Blu-Ray drive

I have a Blu-Ray disc burnt from a 10.5.6 - iso, that I grabbed from archives.org .

Somehow the Blu-Ray - drive / disc is not detected bootable, though it mounts correctly on the desktop / finder in the 10.5.8 - System, that I currently have installed .


If I clearly recall ... booting from a USB-drive needs some extra tweaking in Open Firmware, but does that also apply to booting from a USB Blu-Ray - drive ?


If so ...

Can this info be any of a guide-line ?


I only need to boot from a install disc in order to re-partition the System Drive on my iMac G5 for as Disk Utility is failing the re-partitioning task, when I'm trying to run it from within the installed OS .


https://www.macintoshrepository.org/articles/224-how-to-install-mac-os-x-leopard-on-your-powerpc-ppc-mac-with-a-usb-flash-drive


With this tutorial is it possible to boot from the USB Blu-Ray - drive ?

Earlier Mac models

Posted on May 22, 2024 5:38 AM

Reply
5 replies

May 22, 2024 3:02 PM in response to Tonza72

What undoubtedly happened is that you downloaded an image of a Restore Disk for another model Mac. Installation of that software build isn't supported on your G5 iMac. Check ebay for a retail box "universal installer" DVD, as shown by Allan. Otherwise, you could check online for the gray Restore Disk that shipped with your iMac.

May 22, 2024 8:37 AM in response to Tonza72

It's possible that is the instructions to get a PPC Mac to boot OSX from a USB source.:_


Booting your iBook G4 from a USB stick

So I spent the better half of the night trying to figure out how to make my iBook G4 boot from a USB stick. I have the Leopard ISO, but none of my DVD drives will burn Dual Layer, so I needed to use the USB route.


However, none of the nonsense I found on the Internet could give me proper instructions. The system itself doesn't directly support it (holding down option during power-on doesn't show it either).


So I had to dig into my OpenFirmware roots and do it the old fashion way. So here's the quick tip for the rest of you out there (hopefully Google will eventually pull this up in page ranks so it gets hit first and saves people time).


  1. Plug in the USB device where you have copied your bootable system to (I do not cover this part since it's well covered already, google is your friend).
  2. Power on your iBook and hold down Command+Option+O+F. This will take you into the OpenFirmware. Scary looking if your not a computer type person.
  3. Once you see the screen go white with some text on it, you can release the keys in the previous step.
  4. Type "boot ud:,\\:tbxi" and if you're lucky, it will start booting from your USB device. If not, continue on.
  5. Type "dev usb0" at the little ">" prompt and hit return.
  6. Type "ls". If you see something like "/disk@1", continue, else go to the previous step and use "usb1" instead.
  7. If you get here and you haven't seen something like "/disk@1", then you're likely screwed, sorry.
  8. Type "dev disk@1" and hit return, and then "pwd" and hit return again. You should see something that looks like "/pci@f2000000/usb1b,1/disk@1". You will use this in the next step.
  9. Type "boot /pci@f2000000/usb1b,1/disk@1:,\\:tbxi". This is the device part you got in the last step after typing "pwd" with ":,\\:tbxi" added to the end.
  10. Moment of truth, hit enter. You should now be booting into your USB drive. IT WILL BE SLOW SO BE PATIENT


This should also work on other PPC Mac's that don't normally boot from USB, such as G3s.

https://ben-collins.blogspot.com/2010/08/booting-your-ibook-g4-from-usb-stick.html

Booting from a USB-CD / DVD / Blu-Ray drive

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