Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

andrewj · Apr 13, 2007, 10:58 AM

I have a 12" Powerbook G4 that came with Panther 10.3 on it. I've run in to some problems with it I need to restore it from the discs that came with it, BUT I lost my restore discs :-\ .
Does anyone know of anywhere I can order this disc?
Or if I were to buy Panther, would I be able to boot my Powerbook from the disc? Or do you run the OS X disc after the computer is already booted up?

At this point it won't even boot up so I can't really do anything.

Hopefully this isn't too confusing and someone can help me out.

Thanks.

osiris24x · Apr 13, 2007, 04:46 PM

If you contact Apple with your serial number and receipt, they should send you new restore discs. If you're going to *buy* an OS, I would recommend buying Tiger, not Panther, to put on there. In fact, that's what I'd recommend doing either way.

Good luck!

andrewj · Apr 13, 2007, 04:52 PM

I would rather upgrade to Tiger as well, I just didn't know if I will be able to load Tiger on there without the computer actually booting up. If i can be sure that I can put the Tiger disc in and it will boot up with that disc, that is the route I'd prefer to take.

I will look into contacting Apple, I didn't even think of that. Thank's a lot for you help. It's very much appreciated.

Eriamjh · Apr 13, 2007, 10:17 PM

eeee-Bay.

osiris24x · Apr 14, 2007, 12:22 AM

Ya, you boot your computer from the OS install disc. If your computer has a problem booting from the install disc, then you have a hardware problem.

JKT · Apr 14, 2007, 05:21 AM

A plain vanilla 10.3.0 disk probably will not boot the computer, if it shipped with a version later than 10.3.0, fwiw.

osiris24x · Apr 14, 2007, 11:24 PM

Originally Posted by JKT

A plain vanilla 10.3.0 disk probably will not boot the computer, if it shipped with a version later than 10.3.0, fwiw.

Yes it will...

The OS disc doesn't care what version your computer shipped with (nor does it have any way of knowing). Basically as long as your Mac can read the media, and the OS disc is of the correct platform (PPC vs Intel) then the disc should boot (with a few exceptions).

JKT · Apr 15, 2007, 04:11 AM

Actually, no it won't if the Powerbook requires software in 10.3.x to boot that isn't present in 10.3.0. My Powerbook will not boot from a 10.3.0 installer CD. It requires 10.3.7 to be able to boot.

You can use the freeware Mactracker application to determine what OS is the minimum your Mac can run.

analogika · Apr 15, 2007, 06:23 AM

JKT is correct.

osiris24x · Apr 15, 2007, 11:52 PM

Well I stand corrected then. That's very, very bizarre.

JKT · Apr 16, 2007, 03:07 AM

Originally Posted by osiris24x

That's very, very bizarre.

Not really. Take Tiger for example - it has been out for nearly two years now. Would you really expect a Mac released today to be bootable by 10.4.0? (Obviously not, given that they are now using Intel chips

but you get my meaning?)

mac128k-1984 · Apr 16, 2007, 07:07 AM

Originally Posted by osiris24x

Yes it will...

The OS disc doesn't care what version your computer shipped with (nor does it have any way of knowing). Basically as long as your Mac can read the media, and the OS disc is of the correct platform (PPC vs Intel) then the disc should boot (with a few exceptions).

Nope thats not true. The lowest version a mac can boot from is what came with the computer. So if you have a mac that came with 10.4 it will not work with 10.3, 10.2 etc.