[Hippy_Skinplant]

I've been upgrading a G3 B&W and I got a brand new copy of Panther from ebay. When it arrived it turned out to be the copy included with a new G5, and I can't get the system to boot off of it. The CD drive just seems to go into a little loop of scanning the disk, and the screen shows a folder icon alternating between the Mac logo and a question mark.

Is the G5 copy different from the regular retail one, or am I looking at maybe a CD drive problem or something similar?

[Maflynn]

I think the CD that comes with Panther is actually a DVD and not a CD, so that could be one possability.

Mike

[msuper69]

I just checked and it is a DVD.

[Person Man]

You can boot off of that disk on a B&W G3, but you have to have either a DVD ROM drive (which was an option on those computers) or a DVD/CD-RW combo drive. The disk is a DVD.

It even says so on top. Panther retail on CD comes on 3 CDs, with a 4th for XCode. With computers that come with DVD drives, the restore disks are usually one or two DVDs, depending on how much preinstalled software you have.

No, there is no way you can make the install CDs from the DVD, either.

[Hippy_Skinplant]

I stuck the DvD drive from my PC into and got them booting.
Gets as far as the install screen and gives me the message of "Bundled software cannot be installed on this system". I'm guessing it's because of them being G5 DVD's.
I'll stick them on ebay and just pick up a boxed new copy with the cash.

[Person Man]

Originally posted by Hippy_Skinplant:
I stuck the DvD drive from my PC into and got them booting.
Gets as far as the install screen and gives me the message of "Bundled software cannot be installed on this system". I'm guessing it's because of them being G5 DVD's.
I'll stick them on ebay and just pick up a boxed new copy with the cash.

The bundled software refers to the additional (non-system) software on the disk. The operating system installer should work just fine.

[mikerally]

Just a bit of information for you guys:

The PowerMac G5 ships with 3 software discs (2x DVDs and 1x CD).

The 2x DVDs are the "Software Install and Restore" discs.

The first disc is bootable by any Panther compatible Mac with a DVD drive, and boots into a modified version of the Panther installer.

The installer on this disc refuses to install on anything other than a PowerMac G5 - this disc can be copied and modified to install onto any Mac (simply by editing the .plist files in the Installer Packages) as I have done for myself. Once the installer is hacked, everything else installs and boots fine.

This installer installs 10.3.5 and iLife '04 (the GarageBand packages are located on the second DVD).

The third disc, is the "Apple Hardware Test & Additional Applications" CD. On here you will find the Apple Hardware Test software (which you need to boot into) and installer packages for a 30 day trial of Microsoft Office for Mac 2004 and the Mac OS 9 System Folder for use with Classic (which is no longer pre-installed on these machines).

Simply put, if you have a DVD Writer you can copy and modify these DVDs to install Mac OS X v10.3.5 and iLife '04 on your Mac.

If you really want, I can provide more detailed instructions about what to modify.

[mikerally]

I've gotten a few Private PMs about this, so I thought I'd follow up:

Right I don't want to give the game away (because Apple may just decide to modify their installer packages if they hear people have gotten wind of this and are openly spreading the info about) but this will guide you in the right direction.

Simply find the relevant installer packages (.pkg and .mpkg) files on the disc. You will need to modify more than one of them. They will all be in a hidden directory called Packages on the disc. Right click each package and choose "Show Package Contents", browse into the Contents folder inside the package - find the file Info.plist and open it up with any text editor - find the relevant XML Keys for the hardware check and completely remove the keys and their values.

Then burn the modified disc.

I'm sorry I can't remember offhand which packages to modify specifically (start with the main ones and the iLife ones, yes more than one package does a check). I cannot remember the exact XML keys either, run a search for the hardware value of the machine the bundled disc came with (e.g. Powerbook3,3 for a Rev/A 12inch Powerbook).

This shouldn't take more than an hour of your time to investigate.

P.S. as a side note, the new installer/restore discs (as of 2005) that ship on a Double Layer DVD will need to be burnt to a DVD+R DL disc or copied to a seperate bootable HD or partition (e.g. not the one that you plan to install on).