terrifromjarrow

Q: upgrading my old emac

Hi, I have a rather old emac which I bought during 2004. The spec is:

 

Proc: 1ghz powerpc G4

Mem: 1gb SDRAM

OS: 10.5.8

HD: approx 80gb

 

This old mac does not have wireless facility and, therefore, is not connected to the internet.

 

I am wanting to completely reinstall the system and it won't now recognise the disks that were supplied.

 

I did upgrade the OS but am unable to find any disks.

 

What I want to do and this is what I am asking all you lovely people is:

 

How can I reinstall the system

What's the best OS that I should use (I am hoping to use this for design work - Photoshop/Illustrator/Indesign eventually)

What's the most economical way to get this old thing wirelessly connected to my broadband?

 

I am extremely short of cash at the moment so looking to do this as moneysaving as possible.

 

 

On the back of this I am hoping to upgrade the OS of my lovely faithful macbook from 10.5.8 to hopefully lion.

 

Any ideas would be gratefully taken on board!

 

Kind regards

 

Terri

emac, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Sep 7, 2011 3:59 AM

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Q: upgrading my old emac

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  • by Thomas Brierley,Helpful

    Thomas Brierley Thomas Brierley Sep 7, 2011 4:20 AM in response to terrifromjarrow
    Level 3 (540 points)
    Sep 7, 2011 4:20 AM in response to terrifromjarrow

    Although it is possible to run 10.5 on a G4, from personal experience i'd say it's better to stay on 10.4 for speed, especially with those specs. Take a look at the applications (and their version) that you intend to run on the machine for compatibility when deciding which of these systems to install, as there are quite alot of apps that left 10.4 support behind.

     

    What versions are the install disks that you have at hand? If they are machine specific and not booting there are other ways to use them.

     

    The most economical way to get wireless working is to find a compatible USB WiFi dongle, there are more and more these days that officially support OS X, but you need to double check it supports the system version you are installing. Also it's better to get one that can plug n' play (so that it uses Apple's own kexts) 3rd party kexts introduce the possibility for system instability, especially for hardware. Dongles with a broadcom chipset used to be the most compatible in 10.4 but google is your fiend here when deciding what to buy.

  • by terrifromjarrow,

    terrifromjarrow terrifromjarrow Sep 7, 2011 1:47 PM in response to Thomas Brierley
    Level 1 (5 points)
    iCloud
    Sep 7, 2011 1:47 PM in response to Thomas Brierley

    Hi Thomas

     

    Thanks for replying.

     

    The software that was supplied with the trusty old emac was for OS 10.3 but unfortunately the mac won't recognise the first installation disk. Is this due to the fact that I have upgraded to as far as 10.5.8 and it won't like to go backwards?

     

    Once I get the correct system to run on the emac I will start to look for a compatible USB dongle for wifi.

     

    Out of curiosity, what is a 'kext'?

     

    Kind regards

     

    Terri Salmon

  • by BDAqua,

    BDAqua BDAqua Sep 7, 2011 1:58 PM in response to terrifromjarrow
    Level 10 (123,501 points)
    Sep 7, 2011 1:58 PM in response to terrifromjarrow

    Here's a compatible USB+Wifi adapter...

     

    http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/MXP2802GU2/

    Is this due to the fact that I have upgraded to as far as 10.5.8 and it won't like to go backwards?

    No, but you wouldn't want to use it anyway, unless you wated to erase the Disk & go backward. If you ever do get it to boot from the 10.3 Install Disk, DO NOT use Disk Utility or any other utility on it to work on the 10.5 Disk.

  • by Thomas Brierley,

    Thomas Brierley Thomas Brierley Sep 7, 2011 3:32 PM in response to terrifromjarrow
    Level 3 (540 points)
    Sep 7, 2011 3:32 PM in response to terrifromjarrow

    You can still use the 10.3 disc but as you suspected you cannot downgrade the current system, instead you will have to boot from it and wipe the HDD to do a clean install... obviously this means loosing everything on the HDD so back up anything you want to keep.

     

    To boot from the disc, reboot with the disc in the drive and hold down the c key.

     

    How did you update to 10.5 though? do you have a 10.5 install disk too? if it's a choice between 10.5 and 10.3 i'd go for 10.5, panther is just too old.

  • by Stephen Hill2,

    Stephen Hill2 Stephen Hill2 Sep 24, 2011 10:02 AM in response to Thomas Brierley
    Level 2 (280 points)
    Sep 24, 2011 10:02 AM in response to Thomas Brierley

    If you want to burn discs then i suggest you steer clear of 10.5. I upgraded from 10.3.9 to 10.5.6 then to .8 and it crippled my iMovie, iDVD, I can make movies and add Themes but cannot burn them, and Toast will not work at all. I am now thinking of a clean re-install back to 10.3.9. I shall maybe lose some bells and whistles but my use for the eMac is to burn Data discs and home movies for the family.

     

    I've yet to ask the Forum what I need to do to get back to where I was but the eMac is useless to me without the burn capability