Is it possible to create a bootable installation partition for a PowerPC mac using an Intel-based Mac

bootinstallpartitionpowerpc

I had a hard drive failure on my old PowerPC G4 Mac. I need that old Mac to be able to run OS X and OS 9, because I can't retrieve and convert some of the files from the secondary hard drive unless I can run the old programs on the old OS (Like the old Hypercard stacks).

I've been trying to load an image of the installation disk (.dmg) onto an external firewire drive.

I did it using Terminal and the "sudo asr" command, copied that .dmg file, and the partition on my hard drive looks like and behaves like an installation disk (formatted the Hard Drive with Mac OS Extended, Journaled, Apple Partition map format, not GUID).

When I hook it up to the firewire port and boot the G4 holding the "Option" key down, it doesn't bring up anything on the screen where you would select which drive/volume you want to boot from.

Is this an issue with trying to build this from an Intel-based Mac? I'd love to just run the installer and put it onto that hard drive on a partition, but I can't run that installer on an Intel-based Mac.

EDIT: PLEASE DO NOT SUGGEST THE OTHER SIMILARLY TITLED QUESTION, IT IS NOTHING CLOSE TO THE SAME.

I need to do the following –

USING AN EXTERNAL HD with a FireWire port –

  1. Have a bootable installation partition with the OS X 10.4 (or 10.5)
    on it.

  2. Be able to build that partition using an Intel Mac.

  3. Have that external HD be recognized by the G4 PowerMac when I boot
    it up and hold down the Option key.

  4. I then want to be able to run the installer and load OS 10.4 or
    10.5, and OS 9 onto other partitions on that external HD with FireWire and designate it as the startup volume for that machine.

If no one has any insight, I'm considering the possibility that the firmware for the external drive case FireWire port is somehow not readable by 2001 or so G4 PowerMac. I know that an older Intel-based MacBook Pro running OS 10.6 won't format or partition that when hooked up via USB, and indications are that the error has to do with the USB interface. I'm going to get a couple SATA to IDE converter cards, load the installer disk onto one of these SSD SATA drives, plug it into the internal drive interface and install onto a second, empty one.

Best Answer

Maybe this link helps to accomplish what you described: Installing OSX onto PPC using Intel Mac and Firewire

If it works, let us know.