Formatting A Macintosh Hardrive

Yep. 10.4 will come on a DVD unless you send it off to Apple to trade for the 4 CD set, so be sure the Pismo has a DVD drive. One of the options in the menus of the installer is Disk Utility where you can format and partition the HD how you desire.

First off, if you're planning to install Tiger (10.4), you'll need to have a DVD-ROM drive. Start up the machine and hold down the "C" key immediately after the chime. This will boot the machine to the Tiger install disk.

From the "Utilities" menu, choose "Disk Utility." Select your target drive, then select "Partition." Usually one large partition is best, and there are no size limits to partitions on a Pismo (like there would be on a Wallstreet or a tray-loading iMac). Partition as "HFS Extended (journaled)," and check the box to install Mac OS 9 drivers (in case you ever want to boot the machine to Mac OS 9). Click the "Partition" button and you're off to the races.

Now quit the Disk Utility and continue with the Mac OS X installer. It'll walk you through the rest of the process quite nicely.

When the machine reboots itself later, you'll be asked for your user name and password. You'll be using this password every time you install new software, every time you install software updates from Apple, or anytime you want to log into your Pismo from another computer on your network.

*MAKE SURE TO SET THE PASSWORD TO SOMETHING YOU'LL REMEMBER LATER.* Although it's possible to reset a forgotten password, it's much easier to just remember it.

I would recommend 10.3 if you're going with a Pismo. In my experience, the Pismo has its best performance under 10.3. 10.4 is ok, but not great on a pismo.