Unsupported leopard installation on a powermac g4
So, after a week of trials and tribulations, Leopard is finally installed and working on a Powermac G4 400Mhz (AGP graphics) computer I managed to salvage from the trash. After upgrading the HDD from a measly 12GB to 80GB and adding an extra 512MB of RAM, I was able to install Tiger on the machine. It took about 5 tries to do so, and though I didn’t know it at the time, it was all because of an outdated firmware issue. So, after discovering that the firmware issue was to blame, I then had to undergo the lenghty process of getting the firmware updated. This involved tracking down some Mac OS 9 install CD’s just so I could do the update. Fortunately, I was able to track them down thanks to the power of torrenting. Once OS 9 was installed, I had to install OS X 10.4 in order to install Leopard. Although Leopard doesn’t officially support any processors running below 867Mhz, programs such as LeopardAssist allow you to get around this requirement. Unfortunately, LeopardAssist didn’t work for me so I had to resort to some manual scripting in OpenFirmware (LeopardAssist simply automates this process for you). Scripting only consisted of three lines so it wasn’t that big of a deal. If any of you guys have questions or are running into trouble, just leave me a comment and I’ll try to help. Depending on how many questions I get, I might put up a more detailed guide.
