MacOS – Can’t get OS X installed on this ancient, formatted eMac

macospantherupgrade

Many years ago I was bequeathed an eMac. I believe it's a 1 GHz G4. It's been sitting around doing nothing for a long time, but now I need to install realMYST Mac edition, from 2002, and it's my best bet.

I was given three OS X install discs with the eMac: A 10.0 disc, an eMac Software Restore disc (that says it has Panther on it), and also a set of Panther upgrade discs. Unfortunately, the eMac refuses to boot from either the 10.0 disc or the Restore disc. It will boot from the Panther Upgrade disc, but I can't install it because the hard drive is blank and doesn't have a previous version of OS X on it!

Is there some file on the disc I could delete, some plist I could change or something, to make this installer not do the upgrade check? Or does anyone have any ideas on how to get it to boot from the restore disc?

EDIT to clarify:

The discs that the eMac won't boot from are in perfect condition and entirely readable by other Macs; the eMac simply won't boot from them. But it boots perfectly every single time from the Panther Upgrade disc. And the Panther Upgrade disc is way more scratched up (to the naked eye, anyway) than the others.

Apparently this eMac shipped with OS X 10.3 Panther. The restore discs claim to have Panther on them. But the eMac won't boot from the restore disc, even though it boots from the Panther Upgrade disc.

Best Answer

The restore disk will work on the old eMac, I remember working on those things, they looked as big and bulky as they really are.

The eMacs had two major issues with them.

  1. Sound card failed. It was a known issue, and Apple at the time if you had your cert, allowed you to repair them.
  2. The CD drive failed. Which it sounds like your may of, if you can read other CDs then it may be that the CDs that it came with either is not compatible with the machine or the firmware may of been updated, and caused the computer to no longer recognize the disks as compatible. Which sometimes was a known issue.

On a side note you never stated how you were attempting to get your computer into booting from the CD... there are multiple ways to try.

The easiest way to see if the disk are even being recognized as a boot disk is as the computer is starting to press and hold down the shift key while the computer is booting. Don't let go until the screen shows all drives that are bootable.

If your CDs are ever going to be recognizable it is going to be here.

Also, and I hate to say this, but make sure you have the correct CD in when you start up, otherwise I really can't guarantee you will ever see the CD.

You can also eject the CD from this screen as well, so if it doesn't show up, you should be able to eject the CD from there, and try other disk.

If this doesn't work, really your only other choice is getting a friend with an old computer and external HD case and install the OS on the drive.

To get to the drive you need to unscrew the back, if I remember correctly they were still using star bits back then, #5 I believe. I may be wrong, but if you need help taking the computer apart ask, I may be able to still get the repair guide for the eMac and tell you how to fix any issues hardware wise you may have with it.

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