So I had some eMacs given to me, 1GHz PowerPC based, 512MB RAM with only a CD drive installed. None of the eMacs were operating as the drives had been erased by the guy who gave them to me. The only install disk I had was a DVD of Tiger OSX 10.4 and also iLife ’06 on DVD.
Available to me was a Macbook Pro (Intel) running Snow Leopard (OSX 10.6.6), an external hard drive with Firewire and USB connectivity, eMacs (PowerPC) with CD drive only. After getting one eMac setup the plan was to use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the completed, updated eMac disk image to all the other eMacs.
The problem I had to solve was getting the eMacs with only the CD drive, setup on OS X Tiger 10.4. I read plenty of websites with options for creating install drives on iPods and DVD disks and external hard drives. I tried USB sticks, iPod installs with no success – eMac just wouldnt find the disk image, and couldnt boot in Target mode because Macbook Pro didnt have same Firewire connector as eMac. The solution that did work for me is outlined below.
- Create a disk image of the Apple OSX 10.4 Tiger install disk
- Insert OSX 10.4 Tiger install disk into the Macbook
- Open “Disk Utility” (in Applications>Utilities)
- Select the Mac OS X Install DVD title from the left menu, then choose New Image from the menu bar

- Before saving, change the Image Format to “read only” then save on Desktop
- when finished creating, select the listed “Mac OS X Install DVD.dmg” in the Disk Utility left frame and from the menu bar run “Images>Scan Image for Restore
- Prepare the Harddrive
- The harddrive I used was formatted as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) drive and I wanted to create a partition on it just for the OS install disk)
- The Macbook Pro didnt have the Firewire connection same as the eMac, so I connected using USB cable (the drive enclosure has both options)
- In Disk Utility select the external hard drive, then select Partition
- I changed mine to have 2 partitions, one 10GB the other 180GB
- I called the 10GB Partition “Mac OS X 10.4 Install”
- Click Apply, it erased the drive and created the Partitions
- Creating the Bootable image on the Hard drive
- Now using Disk Utility (still on the Macbook Pro) I selected the 10 GB External Hard drive Partition ”Mac OS X 10.4 Install” and clicked Restore
- Source – drag the dmg file (see 1.5 above, ”Mac OS X Install DVD.dmg”) into the Source field.
- Destination – drag the 10GB external hard drive partition here
- click Restore, wait till complete
- Installing onto eMac using Firewire drive
- connect the external drive to the eMac using the firewire cable
- turn on the eMac while holding down the “Option” key on the keyboard
- On the screen will be the icon for the Mac OS X Install DVD, make sure this is selected (it’ll appear depressed) then click the arrow button
- Follow the installation steps from the installer.
- Updating OS X 10.4 to OS X 10.4.11 (last version)
- Its possible to download a combo update from Apple that updates OS X 10.4 to the final version, 10.4.11. This update is here: Apple combo update PowerPC 10.4.11
- note – after Id installed this there were still updates to Java (and some other apps which I downloaded once the eMac had a working internet connection)
- Internet Software Updates
- Once everything was installed I connected to the internet (using ethernet to my router) and updated the software using Software Update (from Apple icon menu on top menu bar).
- By choosing Install and Save, the updates will be available to access for any other machines rather than download them each again – [saved in Library/Packages]













