Connect external DVD Writer to iMac G3 / 333

Welcome to the forum

It has been my experience that even if you were to get the the iMac to read DVDs, it won't use an external drive for installing. I haven't actually tried the DVD however, I did with a USB CD drive, and a zip. Neither would work. The media is just spit out on booting. I removed the drive, installed it in a Beige Tower running 10.3.9, cloned the OS, then reinstalled it in the iMac. You can also get Panther on CD. Also you will need to upgrade from OS 8.1. No reason not to have 9.2.

Rick 🙂

Daffy, Welcome to the discussion area!

That won't work for several reasons. The major reason being that you can not boot your iMac from a USB drive. And you can't boot OS X from a USB drive.

I'm trying to upgrade my OS to 10.3.3 with a DVD set I purchased on eBay.

This is also machine specific (since 10.3 retail came on CDs) and wouldn't work for you even if it were CDs and not a DVD.

Daffy,

To achieve this you must:

• Upgrade to OS 9.1 - 9.2.2 to update the firmware required to run OS X at all.
  
• Update the firmware.
  
• Get a copy of retail Panther on CD.
  

regards

mrtotes

This is also machine specific (since 10.3 retail came on CDs) and wouldn't work for you even if it were CDs and not a DVD.

Hi Duane,

Not all machine specific OS installs are truly machine specific. I bought Panther on DVD, from OWC, specified for iBook G4, but assured it would work with any supported machine. It has installed on every machine I have tried it on.

Rick 🙂

Daffy, Welcome to the discussion area!

That won't work for several reasons. The major reason
being that you can not boot your iMac from a USB
drive. And you can't boot OS X from a USB
drive.

I'm trying to upgrade my OS to

He can't even boot with Firewire if he had it.
I upgraded my iMac with the Harmoni G3 board that has firewire included. I can select in the options to have it boot from that external DVD drive, but when it reboots it does not from that firewire drive.

Even pressing C during boot up fails.

10.3.3 with a DVD set I purchased on
eBay.This is also machine specific
(since 10.3 retail came on CDs) and wouldn't work for
you even if it were CDs and not a DVD.

I have been reading several discussions here and am looking for some advice.
•My slot-loading CDR has stopped burning CDs. I get the message that the burn speed is too fast for the drive or the medium. Changing the burn speed in the iTunes preferences has no effect. I always use Verbatim CDs. Always have. Have never had a failure in 6 years.

• I would like to add an external Firewire Superdrive from OWC.

Will I be able boot from this drive to do disc repairs, i.e. Disk Warrior?

600Mhz G3 iMac Mac OS X (10.3.9) 768MB RAM