i just picked up an extra old G4 500 mhz for $140 at a swap meet to add to my render farm. it has 9.1 installed on it. i want to put tiger on it. i am trying to do the install from a burned cd-r backup copy of tiger install. but everytime i click the "click the button below to resttart your computer and begin the installation process" button in the Tiger install script to begin installing tiger i get a " Startup Disk was unable to select the cd as the startup disk (-2) " -error message. i then tried changing the startup disk control panel but the cd is greyed out and not selectable. and booting with option down doesn't see it at all. should i just boot in target disk mode and install from another G4 over network?? or is there some pref. in os 9 i missed that is stopping the cd/dvd drive from being a startup disk??? any help???
Have you tried booting the machine with the C key held down? That will make it try to boot from the optical drive first.
My imac had the same problem, it wouldn't boot from the tiger cd's. I've solved the problem by putting the installer files from the dvd onto my iPod, and then I booted the iMac from the iPod and installed tiger on it's internal hard drive. Also works for mac's without a dvd-drive. You can also use any other external firewire drive, as long it's big enough to hold all the installer files.
Hans
thanks for your help guys. but i don't know what the deal is. the disk i burned must've got messed up. because it wont work on any of my g4's. and i can't even select all the files on the installer disks to copy over to firewire drive for target mode installing. it says that i don't have permissions for some items. anywyas, i'm just going to re-deownload the installers. and try reburning them. thanks anyways.
did you burn the cd a dvd to cd or dvd to dvd? it wont work if you burned dvd to cd.
nope, i burned the 2 install cd's as 2 cd's. but i've just finished downloading the ctual dvd. so when i burn it using toast- do i actually mount the .dmg on desktop and burn that? or do i just drag the unmounted .dmg file to toast and burn that?? i know that i have to burn a toast data, mac volume, no optimize- disk. but i'm unclear as to whether i mount the image before burn or burn the dmg file itself???
be sure to mount it. then once you mount it you might be able to just select "copy" in toast.