My first iMacs

[smason]

Re: My first iMacs

u have to burn using disc utility... i tried some settings on imgburn but it would fail halfway the install.

I don't think the old G5 iMacs can burn dual layer DVDs, so I'm limited to my Windows box. I used poweriso (someone I googled mentioned that it worked for them)
My DVD burner is giving me trouble (it burns ok, but won't verify and wouldn't boot a factory Win7 DVD), so maybe I'll replace it and try again.

[seanc]

Re: My first iMacs

If you have a working Mac, transfer the DMG/ISO to the Mac, get a firewire hard drive.
'Restore' the image to a firewire HDD and just boot from that.

[smason]

Re: My first iMacs

If you have a working Mac, transfer the DMG/ISO to the Mac, get a firewire hard drive.
'Restore' the image to a firewire HDD and just boot from that.

Yeah, that was my first choice, but after searching I remembered I gave my firewire/usb enclosure away last year. All my others are usb and e-sata.

So I replaced my DVD burner, re-burned/verified, and the iMac still doesn't recognize the DVD. Will try a different image next.

[seanc]

Re: My first iMacs

I suspect the problem is, you'll only be able to see the 'Windows' side of the DVD.
Toast might do it if you can find a trial.

[Toasty]

Re: My first iMacs

TransMac perhaps?

http://www.acutesystems.com/scrtm.htm

I believe there is a TORRENT of information out there too....


Toast

[NxB]

Re: My first iMacs

I have an imac g3. It read os9 discs I burnt just fine. Powerbook also read windows burned dvds with osx. Nothing fancy, alcohol 120, poweriso, magiciso all worked for burning. Something else is wrong.

[seanc]

Re: My first iMacs

Get a standard Leopard or Snow Leopard DVD and stick it in a PC, all you'll find is the Boot Camp installer. Stick it in a Mac, you'll get the OS X installation.

I suspect this is the problem with burning as its only seeing one 'partition' as it were.

[smason]

Re: My first iMacs

No, I think the burn is fine, I think the superdive in my iMac is bad.
The iMac can read Windows single layer DVDs but not duals.
I'll get a firewire enclosure and do what I was going to do originally,

[ratdude747]

Re: My first iMacs

i know what the issue is.

your mac's dvd drive is failed. they have a bad habit of killing the super drives...

the fix is to buy a firewire 5.25 enclosure and go from there (ppc cannot usb boot, 1394 only). there is a place that has them for $12... I bought one for my imac g5 with a fried dvd drive, problem solved.

edit- you already figured it out, firewire is the answer.

[smason]

Re: My first iMacs

Update:

I purchased an external drive enclosure (like I need another one...) that has Firewire.
dropped in a Sata drive, plugged it in, opened up the disk utility, navigated to a network share with the Leopard image and tried to restore to the external drive. Silly thing wants a password. I don't know the password on this system. Grrrr.

Feeling creative, I disassembled the enclosure, removed the circuit board, and plugged a DVD drive from one of my windows boxes into it. Told the iMac to boot from it (luckily THAT didn't need a password) and now it has Leopard on it.

Seems to work pretty well. I don't like how the mouse is performing, but it might just be the desk surface. First thing I tried to install was Firefox (I hate Safari) and of course it won't run on a G5.

Any tips to where to find some good G5 compatible programs?

[seanc]

Re: My first iMacs

Firefox will work just fine with Leopard and the G5, but you'll probably find you need Firefox 3.6.

[lkvee]

Re: My first iMacs

For some unknown reason I decided I'd like to learn a bit about Macs.
I haven't touched a Mac since the Mac Classic back in the 80s.

So I aquired 2 iMacs this week.
#1 iMac G5 I got from a car dealership, they say it was displaying pictures all day every day, then died.
I disassembled it. Looks clean, and the motherboard has lots of beautiful flat-topped Rubycons.

The power supply is another story. Full of crappy bloated Elite and Ltec caps.

So I'm starting with the power supply. Have replaced a few caps, including the one under the heatsink. Managed to get it out, and another in without removing the heatsink, which has about 6 TO-220 devices on it.
THere's friggin glue on almost every cap, and some of the through-holes have been a pita to desolder.

<SNIP>

Stay tuned.

I was looking for threads on the iMac, and found this one. Got a 17" which would turn on and behave as expected intermittently. I also found bloated caps and yes, the one underneath the heatsink is popped on mine.

I would find out the values as I pulled 'em out one by one, but if anyone's performed a poly-mod on these power supply capacitors, I'd love to get their specs, and maybe even their physical dimensions. If anyone's encountered other issues, like bad transistors and/or bad/dry/cracked solder joints, pleeeeeeeeeease lemme know!

FAQ? Can I use a good power supply from a 20" iMac or one with iSight to test this one at 17" without iSight?

I'm looking forward to my first iMac fix!

Thanks for reading!

[smason]

Re: My first iMacs

Check with Topcat he's done some poly re-caps, but I think just the system board, not the power supplies.
As for power supplies, I don't know which ones are compatible with what, perhaps someone else knows.

[Toasty]

Re: My first iMacs

Poly-mod on PSU gains you nothing and raises cost 2-3x more than needed. There are no less than 20 threads on iMac PSU's and caps to use.