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Boot a PowerPC Mac from a USB2 drive

by Dan Pourhadi Mar 7th 2006 at 8:00PM

We all know that the Intel Macs can easily boot from USB drives, but that was never really a viable option on the PowerPC machines.

At least, that's what most of us assumed. Mac OSX Hints jumps on Yet Another Opportunity To Prove Me Wrong, this time posting a step-by-step guide to booting your PowerPC Mac with a USB 2.0 device. The procedure has been tested on the newer iMac G5 models (with the ambient light sensor onward) and the 1.33GHz 12" PowerBook G4, but it's worth giving it a try on other newer PPC Macs, too. It's pretty tricky, involving some fancy Open Firmware manuevering, but the procedure looks promising.

Give it a try and let us know how it works, ok?

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Hardware Peripherals Tips and tricks

We all know that the Intel Macs can easily boot from USB drives, but that was never really a viable option on the PowerPC machines.At...
 

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portorikan

Could someone inform me of what the purpose of this is?

I really don't know.

March 08 2006 at 10:43 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
RedDrumMaster

..Nice, now give us please the manual to boot FireWire devices on a Intel Mac :-)

March 08 2006 at 6:04 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Lars

Even the newer Intel iMacs?

March 08 2006 at 3:32 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Henry

Since the second iMac G5 Revision.

March 07 2006 at 9:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
icruise

Since when have iMacs had ambient light sensors?

March 07 2006 at 8:26 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
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