[Beepcake]

I'm not 100% sure whether this thread is allowed, but I couldn't see anything specifically disallowing it in the rules:

Image

Works fine, certainly haven't noticed any massive slowdown.. even the fancy new photo screen saver runs nicely

[Lateralus]

...whoa. You can turn off the transparency of the system menu?

[Big Mac]

Very cool getting it on your Mac. Did you have to do anything special?

It has been known for a while that you can turn off the transparent menu bar.

[Beepcake]

A hacked installer was necessary, so I probably can't say much more.. it really does run fine though, it just shows how odd the system requirements are.

I haven't done anything to the menu bar, it's possible it's because I was connected via screen sharing at the time, or maybe because it doesn't support core image? The fancy pants dock works though, complete with reflection so I dunno.

[Beepcake]

I did this without a second machine by the way.. in case anyone is interested.. I don't have a second PPC machine to use the target disk mode trick so I had to resort to this.

[Big Mac]

I don't think there's any problem with discussing hacked installations for older Macs. We've had a lot of people discuss XPostFacto, for example.

[peeb]

Woot! I don't really want to go there, but I don't see the ethical difference in discussing hacking it onto old macs and hacking it onto 3rd party intels.

[Beepcake]

XPostFacto, as far as I know, modified Darwin's open source to work, rather than actually modifying the installer.. so it's probably slightly dodgy ground.. but i'm not a mod, so I dunno

[Big Mac]

Originally Posted by peeb 

Woot! I don't really want to go there, but I don't see the ethical difference in discussing hacking it onto old macs and hacking it onto 3rd party intels.

You don't see any distinction between installing on hardware you paid Apple for and hardware you didn't pay Apple for?

[peeb]

No, not really. I mean, the purpose of not allowing it on Intels is to protect apple hardware sales, and the purpose of the 800mhz cut-off seems to be to protect apple hardware sales.

[Beepcake]

I'm not sure it's protecting Apple hardware sales.. people are more likely to upgrade if they are finding things slow or if their applications require an upgrade rather than the latest O/S. All the previous builds worked fine on the 800Mhz, it's only the latest build that has pushed the limit higher for some reason.

I also have a MacBook, MacBook Pro, 2 Intel Minis and a 24" iMac by the way.. the G4 is just too cool to not have

[MindFad]

I plan on doing a target disk install to my dual 800 from my MacBook Pro whenever it gets here!

[Beepcake]

Originally Posted by MindFad 

I plan on doing a target disk install to my dual 800 from my MacBook Pro whenever it gets here!

Won't work unfortunately. The installer insists on the drive being re-partitioned as a GUID partition table to install if you run it on an Intel Mac, which your dual 800 won't be able to boot from.

[MindFad]

Hmm, I was worried about that. Well, ****.

How'd you hack the installer to get it to install then? If paranoia persists, PM me maybe? I'd really like this on my dual 800.

[Beepcake]

Originally Posted by MindFad 

Hmm, I was worried about that. Well, ****.

That's what I tried initially but had the GUID problem which is why I had to sort a different method.

[MindFad]

Spill the beans already!

[Scott-G]

This is good to know. I have an older G4 that my kids use. I wanted to use the new OS because of some of the improvements in Parental Controls.

One question, though, is will subsequent system updates also check for the minimum requirements? I would not want to have to use target disk mode to do system updates.

[peeb]

Can't be sure, but I doubt it.

[imitchellg5]

As long as he paid for it, I doubt Apple cares much.

[Beepcake]

I doubt updates will check.. the "protection" is very basic.

Rather than distributing the modified installer I'll type a quick tutorial up on how to do it yourself.. it's not complicated.

[MindFad]

Thanks.

[peeb]

Originally Posted by imitchellg5 

As long as he paid for it, I doubt Apple cares much.

Well, they care enough to disable the install for those machines.

[Beepcake]

Ok, to do this you will need:

• Leopard (duh!)
• A spare partition, drive or ipod. Or if you prefer you can create a sparseimage, edit it, and write it back to a dual layer DVD-R but some early Macs don't seem to read dual layer discs too well.
• Xar. If you are running a Leopard beta, or have another Leopard machine then you will already have this. If you don't, you can get it from DarwinPorts.. simple instructions for installing it are here: xar version 1.5.1 for Mac OS X
• Ability to handle a Terminal. You can do it all from Finder/Text Edit, but you will need to enable showing of all files ("defaults write com.apple.finder AppleShowAllFiles True" from a Terminal window)

Basically what we are going to do is edit the installer to remove the various checks that validate your hardware.

Firstly you need to use Disk Utility to "Restore" your Leopard DVD to your spare partition/drive/sparse image. To do this you just select the image in Disk Utility, choose Restore, then set the Source and Destination. This will take 10-20 minutes or so. Once it's done, make sure the new copy is mounted.

Next it's time to find the installer file and copy it somewhere for us to edit. The file in question will be in "/Volumes/<Volume Name>/system/Installation/Packages" where <Volume Name> will probably be MAC OS X Install DVD. Copy the OSInstall.mpkg to a temporary directory (make sure it's the mpkg and NOT the pkg).

Change to your temporary directory and use the following command:

xar -x -v -f OSInstall.mpkg

This will extract the mpkg and you should end up with several things, including a file called Distribution, which is the file we need to edit. Open it in either vi or text edit and you should find several functions called checkSupportedMachine, checkSupportedBootRom, hasAtLeastRam, installCheckScript and volCheckScript; we need to replace each of these so they always pass. Replace those functions with the following:

----- START -----
function checkSupportedMachine(machineType){
return true;
}

function checkSupportedBootRom(machineType){
return true;
}

function hasAtLeastRam(RAM) {
return true;
}

function installCheckScript(){
return true;
}

function volCheckScript(){
return true;
}
----- END -----

Save the file and quit the editor. Make sure your terminal is still in the temporary directory and type the following command:

xar -c ./ -v -f ~/Desktop/OSInstall.mpkg

This will create a new version of OSInstall.mpkg on your desktop; copy this file over the original file in /Volumes/<Volume Name>/system/Installation/Packages.

You should be all done. If you are using a spare disk/partition then you should be able to boot from it and install. If you are using an image you will need to write it back to a DVD and boot from that. If you only have single layer DVDs you can remove all the printer drivers and language packs from the Packages directory, along with the XCode directory in optional installs and it should fit nicely.

There may well be good reasons why Apple restrict installation on certain hardware so I can't promise it's going to run properly on a G3, but it seems to run perfectly fine on my 800Mhz iMac G4.

Hope that all makes sense

[.Neo]

Beepcake, do you think Mac OS X Leopard runs good enough to be usable on your iMac? I might install it on my mom's 1GHz G4 eMac, but I'm not sure if I should. Currently I have Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger installed on it.

Originally Posted by Big Mac 

It has been known for a while that you can turn off the transparent menu bar.

Which is complete nonsense. All the stories about being able to turn of the transparent Menu Bar are fairy tales. There's no preference located somewhere in Appearance or whatever and there never was.

The only reason why his Menu Bar is solid is because his Mac's GPU isn't capable of displaying it without compromising system performance. It's a fail save Apple build in.

Maybe there's a way to toggle transparency with a Terminal command or something, but it's by no means a regular decision for the end-user to make.

[Beepcake]

Originally Posted by .Neo 

Beepcake, do you think Mac OS X Leopard runs good enough to be usable on your iMac? I might install it on my mom's 1GHz G4 eMac, but I'm not sure if I should. Currently I have Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger installed on it.

Definitely. I really don't think it's any slower than Tiger in general use and apps seem to launch as quickly as they ever did. It's not quite as slick at showing the reflections in the dock as my newer machines, but it doesn't cause any usability problems, and if you find that annoying you can always revert back to the normal dock.

[.Neo]

Originally Posted by Beepcake 

Definitely. I really don't think it's any slower than Tiger in general use and apps seem to launch as quickly as they ever did. It's not quite as slick at showing the reflections in the dock as my newer machines, but it doesn't cause any usability problems, and if you find that annoying you can always revert back to the normal dock.

OK thanks. I'll have to give it a shot.

[n00n00]

Hi can someone explain how to do this without using terminal. I can kinda understand terminal but usually mess up if trying to use it - very un mac like indeed.

I am also currently stuck trying to find the installer to edit. How do I find it please? (in simple idiot language).

Am i supposed to use the teminal to find it or something as it doesn't appear in the finder??? All is see is a contents folder with a resources folder and a Mac OS folder in it.

Please help

[n00n00]

alternaitvely can someon write the terminal version except with everything i have to wirte asi i don't know any terminal commands like how to navigate

[n00n00]

ok i finally found that OSInstall.mpkg file (only took 2.5 hours) . How do i copy it to somewhere please? what is the command cp something?

[Tsilou B.]

I have installed Leopard on a 800MHz iMac G4, too.
I've noticed a small problem, however, which only affects that iMac and none of my other Macs: When I open iChat and go to the "Audio" (or "Video" if you connect a camera) menu, I cannot enable screen sharing on the iMac G4. The menu item is greyed out.
I don't really know if that has something to do with a wrong setting somewhere or if it's a hardware limitation, so it would be really cool if you could check if the "Enable Screen Sharing" command is disabled on your iMac G4 as well. Thanks in advance!

[Beepcake]

I don't use iChat, but I can do "normal" Leopard screen sharing ok. I'll fire it up later and see if the option is working or not.

[dwedwards]

As soon as I change the distribution file and load of my external as start up disk it says that the cd may be scratched?

[OwlBoy]

My intuition would say you should be good on an 800mhz G4 iMac for basic stuff, just make sure you gots as much ram as you can afford

-Owl

[jfalberti]

I have an iBook G4, 800mghz, 1.2 GB RAM, and successfully installed Leopard last Friday night. Here is how I did it:

Searched the web for a program called LeopardAssist and downloaded it to my iBook. I ran the program which ran a script that modified some system parameters. It asked some installation questions, and I just took the default for each of them. At the end, it prompted me to insert the Leopard DVD and click rebooot.

The first time I tried to install without running LeopardAssist, and got the message that the machine did not meet specs and the install died. I then ran LeopardAssist and restarted the install and it ran fine. At the end of the install, LeopardAssist reset my machines parameters back to normal, and it runs great. I've also applied all the updates to Leopard and have not run into any problems.