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I do have an airport card a available, taken from working g5 and switched to ethernet, selling for £5 ($7 approx and not including posting fees) so not sure if u want it but tell me if you do.
No joke, the whole "create a partition and use target disk mode" trick was what I did with my recently acquired Power Mac G4 tower. DVD drive didn't like my Tiger disc, so I used my Powerbook G4 (which had it's own installation hell for leopard, since the superdrive in it was dead (lol)) to act as a source for the tiger install dmg. It worked. :D
I did kinda the same with my iMac G5 17" and my 20" Intel iMac Early 2006, the G5 had a dead optical drive so I restored a Leopard install image on a partition of the G5 on TGM using the iMac 20" 😂 It worked too
Yep same here except I didn’t restore a dvd to the drive and then install it I just threw my Powermac G4 into target disc mode and restored my tiger partition from my iBook to the powermac
@@antares2323 Just now saw this -- That's basically what I did with the PowerBook G4 to get it going originally. Made a partition on it for leopard and put the install files on that, then once leopard was installed nuked that. Did that, however, with an external drive thing we had at work which I had a chance to borrow -- bought some Firewire cables which came in handy for the G4 tower a few weeks later when I got it. Funny how we all find solutions to our systems quirks. I think it's why I like the vintage mac community, we're oddly resourceful!
I'd bet they were using that machine to deploy OS 10.5 Intel on newer machines through target disk mode which is why it was formatted the way it was, or it was in an Intel iMac and the hard drive died and nobody bothered with it because they didn't realize they had to redo the hard drive to boot on PPC. Those never came with a 500gb hard drive.
I bought one back in 2015 fully working for $30. But a mouth later the capacitors blew and when we replaced all the capacitors on the motherboard, the new ones blew so we sold it for parts or not working for $35 and basically made 5 dollars 👌
10.4 runs better on those. 10.5 is a bit too much for a mac with only 2GB of RAM. Keep that for the dual G5 towers in the future, put 10.4 on this thing. that capacitor is extra power delivery for the RAM slots, you're going to want to get that redone, and replace all the caps while you're in there. not a hard job, and if you get POLYMER CAPS as replacements you shouldn't ever have another cap issue with them for a very long time. those macs suffer from cap plague just like the Dells of the time.
Or just a G5 tower with One CPU would be enough for Leopard as long as you have at least 4Gb of RAM. Sincerely, a guy who runs Leopard on a 1.8Ghz G5 tower with 6Gb of Ram and a crappt fx 5200
Leopard runs okay on my powerbook g4 with 2gb of ram. Tiger is definitely a better option though(although dual booting is preferred as you can use either)
I wrote tbxi boot files for OpenFirmware in the past, actually run OpenBSD on my iMac G3. U can even do art for them. If you ever wanna run anything crazy on your ppcmacs permanently. hmu
From what I remember, these old Macs actually do have a manual eject mechanism on the optical drive. You're supposed to put the paper clip into one of the edges of the slot which presses a switch and pushes the disk out.
I’d never see an iMac G5 disassembled before. When you popped the back panel off in on piece, I audibly said “What!?” I just finished upgrading my 2009 iMac to an SSD. What a nightmare…
Before my old G4’s died. I had to borrow a black MacBook to format one of them. I had to throw the Black MacBook into target disc mode and use the G4 to set up, didn’t know you could do it the other way round.
I have a Intel Imac, but I bought it for like $60 working. I also bought an Intel based mac mini that was not working, but the intel 82801 was defective. It was not letting the hard drive or dvd rom communicate, so I bought a supposedly new old stock 82801 that was preballed from Korea for like $8. It was a pain to get the old one off the board with just a heat gun, but I did get it off. Then came the fun part installing it, and in the oven it went. I had to set my oven to 420 F and used some screws to hold the board in the air inside a glass dish, I did remove the only electrolytic cap that was on the board. Then had to let it bake for about 20 minutes until I could tell it had flowed and the chip settled properly. I pulled it out and let it cool, then replaced the cap and reassembled it, powered it on after changing the processor to an upgraded version, then updated the firmware and installed 4 gb of ram, added an ssd and it worked and still works with no problems. I had gotten it for like $30 with free shipping originally and it was a cheap repair I also got a 110 watt psu for like $10 shipped. I guess most of the core 2 duo mac mini's won't recognize 4 gb of ram it is ddr2 667. But mine was originally a 1.83 and I switched it to a 2.0 ghz. I have 10.7.2 installed, but can' t install mountain lion or higher.
I'm guessing they put a hard drive from an Intel machine into the G5, and since it was GPT it wouldn't boot, and since the optical drive seemed dead they couldn't reinstall it. This thing has definitely been violated, I think these had a cover over the hard drive, and I don't think apple would have random taped up wires stringing across...
Awesome I really love the nostalgia with these older machines and love the older versions of Mac OS ! I also was soo excited for every new release of Mac OS all those years ago ! Of course I still am but it’s no where near the same excitement ! Keep up the awesome work !
This is my first iMac I found at a flea market with the original (seen better days but still sturdy) and the computer itself works for $75. I want to do upgrades and keep it. And recently got mid 2010 iMac from a neighbor that was moving and was throwing out said screen didn’t work. Power cable, mouse & 2 wireless keyboards. Powers on just doesn’t boot up. Found to be faulty drive! So get free iMac!
Apple used to refer to the process of setting a boot volume (or System Folder in the pre-Mac OS X days) “blessing.” In older Mac operating systems, all you had to do was drag the Finder and the System suitcase inside the same folder, and its icon would immediately change to a picture of the original Mac-it would become “blessed.” There’s still a _bless_ command in macOS. Do a “man bless” in Terminal. P.S. Indeed, the Mac will eject a disc from the optical drive if you hold down the mouse button upon startup.
Check the capacitors, they were known to be leaky. I bought one from eBay at $20 cuz it couldn’t go to sleep mode and when I opened it up, the capacitors were leaky as hell with rust
I'm stuck with an iMac G5 that only lights up the 2nd diagnostic LED when the power button is pressed without it turning the 1st off it's probably something to do with something rattling inside the PSU and it missing a half of its parts, but idk if it should get stuck in a half-standby, half-on state though
Hey Ken! Wonder why does the iMac sound like it's going to blast off? The explanation is below. Ian (Druaga1) installed an SSD on his iMac G5 on one of his older videos, if you have watched it. At 21:53 on your video, you can see that the plastic cap that sits on top of the 2 fans between the optical drive and the hard drive is missing. I don't know if that's a big deal, but it might act as a noise dampener (again, not an expert on Apple computers). Also, according to him, the hard drive bracket (it's metal and it goes around the drive) has a cable attached to it. If this is disconnected or damaged, the system does not get any data about the temperature, thus increasing the speed of the fans to the maximum for safety. You should check the bracket and the cable to see any signs of physical damage, if the noise from the fans annoys you.
But did you dump the computer again? That's really wrong. I understand your excitement over finding such a beefy harddisk on such an old machine, but no doubt you could have salvaged more stuff from that.
These G5's can have the screen rewired for HDMI and a custom backlight circuit made. Can essentially make it into a Hackintosh with an Intel NUC. I got almost done with mine, but I had life stuff come up. Mine has been taken apart, unfinished, under a bed for a few years now. RIP
The thing is early g5 iMacs where hardly any faster then the eMac it later replaced. Yet the G5 always ran very hot thus these things easily overheats.
13:47 here is the problem! "Partition Map Scheme: GUID Partition Table" OMG that was the _only_ issue with the machine! :D I looked up the iMac G5 latest model with ambient light sensor, it came with 250GB max. Surely the previous owner gave it to someone to upgrade that Hard disk (stripped screws) which was likely preformatted as GPT or even MBR when bought and they didn't understand the installer error you saw, they tried "restore" hoping this means restore the system. But it all failed because PowerPC macs only boot Apple Partition Map (APM) otherwise they would have booted into the installer at least. Maybe the optical drive did actually work while doing the upgrade because it could have gotten lose in transit when you bought it.
You may be able to take the Flask Drive apart to investigate the disk inside. If it is, like I assumed, a FireWire to PATA or FireWire to SATA adapter board plus a regular HDD, you can replace it with a CompactFlash card (for PATA HDD) or a SATA SSD (for SATA SSD) to make it a FireWire SSD. Then as long as you don't wreck the PCB you can drop it like no tomorrow and the SSD will survive.
Wish I had a G5, fastest pre-Mactel era Mac I had was probably my eMac. Still got it in my wardrobe, maybe I should dig it out and see if it still works...
Hi! Actually, you're not missing much performance between a eMac and an iMac G5. The G5 was not that much more faster than the G4. Where you start to see a difference is with a dual or quad G5 tower.
It's great to see the G5, a much under rated mac (due to the failure rate, caused by the bad caps) I've the 20" 2.0 ghz version, which was a hand me down for a relative. I've indeed had my own miss adventures with it. Mine was unlucky enough to suffer from a bad cap syndrome, where it limped along for ages, sometimes working and then mostly not, where you would try and in vane look at ways of starting it up without it going mental, and trying to blow the wall down. Eventually though the bad caps were too much, and she died, bad times. So Ebay called and a new G5 board was ordered, and it took a while but when it came i installed it. i'd probably installed it the worst way, with the wrong tools and no real skill or talent. However, when started, she lived and is still fighting fit to this day. Anyway i hope yours bring you some enjoyment, in a way most new Macs don't really do as well.
I had a white plastic MacBook that I had to repair. It had a disc stuck in it, I fixed it by unplugging and replugging power. Then I put a ruler in the drive and it spat it out.
The start up chime was fine, all it does is indicate that hardware components (e.g. Motherboard, graphics, ram etc.) are found and responding. It doesn't confirm that an OS is found though. If there was anything wrong it would have been a very different chime, various chimes indicate problems with different components.
I’ve the same type of iMac G5 (though mine was free), it had an odd issue in that it would power on just fine but with no display, but lay it flat on its back and the display was fine. Opened it up and out fell a screw… Looked over the whole system but found nowhere for it to go. Checked caps while back was off (all good) and over the last few days I’ve been configuring it with Sorbet Leopard, Final Cut Studio, a FireWire RAID box I have and going to use it as a retro video editing platform (and you thought you were krazy!)
My 2010 iMac has the same fan problem where it’s loud often when I plug a keyboard in, but eventually it goes away after I’ve booted the computer and played games on it for around 15 mins. It’s not too annoying, but yeah.
On a more serious note: the disc drive on my G5 iSight only reads pressed media, and the HDD and power supply were both dead by the time i put my hands on it. I used dd to shove a disc image onto a USB HDD and the OF prompt to boot and install OS X from USB after buying and installing a new PSU.
Hey ! Great vid. I did service that model on ASP a long time ago. Just a little trick, no need to go to openfirmware for ejecting the disc. Just boot the computer with the click of the mouse pressed ✌ Chears !
We found the G5 in my profile picture for 50$ with maxed specs It was used by a former graphics designer (It came with OSX Panther recovery DVDs and OS X Tiger install DVD)
these things are so loud and the fans go like crazy constantly get they still get so hot the logic boards fry themselves. The only G5 I've got is fried and will no longer display video at all, but can still be accessed by another computer
Wow that's not bad to take apart, for some reason the first 17 inch Core Duos are nightmare to take apart, lots of plastic clips, bezels, ribbon cables getting pinched, why couldn't they just design a different board?
I hold command+E when booting a G5 Mac to get the optical drive to eject at boot. Also, I believe you could use a USB optical drive in place of the built-in one. Pretty sure I made that work once.
it probably is using its fans so much bc its supposed to, modern macs are so focused on silence they kinda get hot, guess they know what they were doing back then, but not now
I hope sometime you can do a video on the first kind of aluminum intel iMac! I recently got ahold of one of those models and I feel like they are the final crossroads between the iMac G5/ iMac G6 (White Intel) models and the later models from 2009 and onwards.
I got a G5 for $20, I thought it was as broken because it would show the no hard drive symbol, but then once I left it on it boots o I have to just leave it on for a bit every time I want to use it.
