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User profile for user: Rob Sivak
Rob Sivak Author
User level: Level 1
24 points

Can I use a backup drive to build a Classic environment on a PowerMacG5 running Leopard?

I'm converting my old PowerMac G5 (circa June 2003, running OSX10.5.8 on the main 300GB drive, with a 1TB backup drive) into a Classic game platform (to replace my aging PowerMac G3 Blue&White, which still runs, but even with my 1 GHz Sonnet G4 upgrade, sooooo slowly). But with Leopard installed on the G5, there is no support for the Classic Environment; that ended with 10.4 (Tiger). So now I'm trying to decide whether to leave Leopard as is on the main drive, and install 10.4 on the old backup and with my System 9 discs build a home for my Classic (mostly game) apps. The tech specs says PowerMac G5s won't boot into OS9, so I've got to use OSX10.4 as the startup. Will this setup work?

Posted on Dec 10, 2013 1:47 PM

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User profile for user: a brody
a brody
User level: Level 10
82,841 points

Dec 11, 2013 7:06 AM in response to Rob Sivak

You have two choices with a PowerMac G5. An external Firewire hard drive, or a second internal SATA hard drive of slow enough speed for its SATA bus. Mac OS 9 must come from the original PowerMac G5 installation discs as one of the installer programs included on those discs. Once you have done the proper restore, you can upgrade the Mac OS X on that hard drive to 10.4.11, but no further. If you lost those discs, call AppleCare and see if they still have them. If not, finding them will be hard unless you can find an Apple user group near you that has users who still have G5s.

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Can I use a backup drive to build a Classic environment on a PowerMacG5 running Leopard?

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