If you have an old G4 sitting around that’s at the 800mhz mark, you probably should try installing Leopard, because most people agree it actually runs FASTER than Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Weird, huh? I guess they’ve optimized the code pretty well.
However, when you try to install the operating system, you are warned that Leopard cannot be installed on your G4. There are a few reasons for this:
1) Leopard requires 512MB of RAM – you have RAM, right?
2) Leopard requires over 867mhz processor
We can fix number 1 by simply getting more RAM. I find Craigslist to be of great use here. Number two is a bit more difficult as G4 processor upgrades are ridiculously expensive once you consider the cost of a Mac Mini, and also requires a bit of tech savvy under the hood as you’d be swapping CPUs.
Not to worry, though. Here’s a way to convince OpenFirmware that your CPU is 867mhz, and allow the installer to boot, install, and get you off and running:
Boot into Open Firmware, I have covered this extensively here:
Once in OpenFirmware, issue the following commands (for single CPU):
dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0
d# 867000000 encode-int " clock-frequency" property
boot cd:,\\:tbxi
For dual CPU:
dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@0
d# 867000000 encode-int " clock-frequency" property
dev /cpus/PowerPC,G4@1
d# 867000000 encode-int " clock-frequency" property
boot cd:,\\:tbxi
Note that all we are doing is over-writing the CPU clock-frequency (speed) property for each CPU installed, at boot time.
Also, if you need to boot another device, try:
printenv boot-device
This will return a list of boot devices to use when booting the installer. I used this in order to boot a Firewire device that had had a disc image (DMG) restored to it, making things a bit easy and faster.
Good luck!
yes this worked first time for me after inserting disk and rebooting from hard drive when i reached the point where it told me it could not be installed on my machine
Thanks! On my ancient G4 tower, this worked, but note that “clock-frequency” worked;
” clock-frequency” did not.
this would be great for me, i “NEED” leopard, but i’m about 76mhz to slow..
i just want to confirm that this will work fine with no problems..
has anyone besides these two people done this?
I’ve been running Leopard Server in a pretty heavy test environment this way for a good 3 months.
ok, can someone help me? I tried but got an error for the last, command. I got, “load-size is too small”. Am i doing this right? there are 3 seperate commands you have to type in? first being dev, second being d# and third being boot? Thats how i tried it and everything was fine for the first 2, got “ok”‘s. but for the last, it said the load size was too small? how do i get around that/fix it?
Are you trying to install from DVDROM? Do you have multiple disc drives?
TBXI needs to be on CD in or der to run “boot cd:,\\:tbxi”
This means:
1) boot
2) boot tbxi
3) find it on the root “\\” of the device “cd”
I tried to boot this off of the dvd by using “boot dvd:,\\:tbxi” and I got the gray screen with a circle with a line through it (like in a no smoking and no parking sign)
I restarted the computer and got the same OS X cannot be installed on this computer…
HELP?!
I tried to install from a dvd using “boot dvd:,\\:tbxi” and got a circle with a line through it on a gray screen…
Help?
It’s still going to be cd:,\\tbxi
Load Size too small– solved for me. I also received the “load size too small” error on submitting the final command line. My problem was that I had typed a space after the comma and before the \\. By removing the space everything went smoothly. Also in regards to another comment above about spacing– on my machine ” clock-frequency” (preceding space) worked but omitting the space didn’t work. (i-Mac- the one that looks like a desk lamp)
Frank