Making Mac OS X boot disc on Windows 10

twiggy36javan

I'm having real problems burning a disc for a Powerbook G4. I downloaded the OS X iso from here and I'm using a Windows 10 laptop to burn it. Fails every time...and I'm wondering is it the iso file or that Windows won't work with a Mac file even when just burning the file to disc?

SomeGuy

You should be able to write them with any program that can write ISOs.

You are writing it as a disk, and not as a file on a disk right? (easy to make that mistake on some crappy CD burning programs). Have you checked that that version of MacOS will run on this machine?

What download(s) were you trying?

twiggy36javan

Hi, I'm trying to use Grail..or Titan...having no luck with either..I know it's the burning that's going wrong as the powerbook will start to load Snow Leopard but won't install it (as expected). When I try to inspect the iso, message comes up that it is not correct iso format or may be corrupt??

stitch

Snow leopard is intel only. You have a PowerPC machine

SomeGuy

Most tools won't know how to inspect the content of Macintosh CDs as they usually only know about ISO/Joliet/UDF file systems. And I seem to recall those Rhapsody builds may have used a system more like NeXTSTEP.

You would really have to look closely at precisely what model or revision your computer is to know if those would actually work. Even a later revision or firmware update could make it incompatible.

garirry

First off, a PowerBook G4 will not run Snow Leopard (10.6). Leopard (10.5) is the latest version that will run on aluminium models (and the last revision of the titanium model), assuming you have enough RAM, Tiger (10.4) is guaranteed to work with all models unless the RAM has been downgraded beyond 128 MB, but I doubt it's possible.

Secondly, I have burned Mac ISOs using Windows before and I can say it works. Don't bother with any silly burning program, get an ISO (avoid DMG), and use Windows' built-in disc burning tool.

Finally, make sure you're not installing a computer-specific version of OS X. It has to be the retail version or the version that came with your computer (but most people don't have it anyway so it doesn't really matter), booting to a computer-specific install will fail the installation, and booting on an Intel copy of 10.4 (not retail) will refuse to boot entirely. Though I'd say that most (even early) versions of whatever OS you're looking for will work. Never had a problem in that regard.