Upgrade OS 10.0.4 to 10.3 or higher

Question

HI
WE have an old blue iMac (from about 2000). It's one of the dual operating system ones. I'd like to set it up so our son can use it to run his Lego Robotics on, and that requires OS 10.3 or 10.4. Will it run on this mac? Can I upgrade or do I have to buy a whole new operating system upgrade? thanks.. marie
G3 iMac   Mac OS X (10.0.x)  

Answer 1

Hi marie,
Unfortunately you do not give us enough information about your system. Please fill in your computer details in "My Settings" in the right sidebar of this page. We need to now as much as possible about your system (Exact Mac type, processor type, MHz, RAM, current system version, etc.) in order to help! Without knowing this there are 2 different procedures.
From the little information you gave I assume that your iMac will need severe updates (e.g. 512 MB RAM recommended, at least 8 GB of free hard disk space, if your iMac is the 233 MHz model it is NOT compatible with 10.4 and some more) in order to meet the minimum system requirements - and even then it will be very sloooooooow. Furthermore you will have to purchase 10.3 or 10.4 since both upgrades are commercial software only (do NOT buy from eBay, since most offers there are hardware specific disks that will not work with your computer). You should consider a new iMac.
First make sure you buy the retail full install version of Tiger (black DVD). You cannot use hardware specific disks that shipped with another computer (gray).
You cannot directly upgrade from 10.0.x to 10.4.x. You will have to either reformat the drive (recommended) or do an Erase&Install. In both cases all your data will be lost, so make sure you have a complete backup!!!
If your computer can boot into OS 9 natively:
I suggest to reformat the drive using the OS 9 install CDs. By reformatting the drive with the OS 9 disk you are safe that all required OS 9 hardware drivers will be installed properly.
1. Boot up from the OS 9 install CD and reformat the drive as Apple Extended (HFS+).
2. Install OS 9 and update it to 9.2.2: Mac OS 9: Available Updates
3. Confirm you can boot into OS 9
4. Upgrade your firmware: Firmware Upgrades
5. Insert the Tiger install DVD and reboot while holding down th c-key.
6. Once the installer has started select "disk utility" from the menu.
7. Select "repair OS 9 privilegies" from the menu.
8. Repair the disk.
9. Quit disk utility and proceed with a normal install (do not select Erase&Install because this would erase your OS 9)
10. After the reboot Repair permissions!
11. Download and apply the Mac OS X Update 10.4.8 Combo PPC.
12. Repair permissions again and finally run Software Update from the Apple menu to install all remaining updates (yes, you should install all at once because only the software update app knows the exact order in which they have to be installed).
Good luck!
If this answered your question please consider granting some stars: Why reward points?