So I've installed Tiger 10.4 on another partition and it seems to boot up OK. Just a few odd problems:
1. Wouldn't install from the CD but it installed OK after I copied all the files to a HD partition and ran from there.
2. Software Update always fails to unpack the download. I've downloaded the 10.4.11 combo to try.
3. The G4 doesn't shut down properly out of Tiger - hangs with a blue screen - still to investigate.
I suspect that #2 and #3 are caused by #1
AFAIK, it has always been the common wisdom that OSX should / must be installed by the OSX installer.
You say "wouldn't install from the CD"… what CD? A general retail, a grey machine specific, a downloaded image?
Both #2 and #3 sound to me like resource missing or misplaced problems. OSX is very finicky about what goes where.
General retail CD pack. Sold for installation on G3/G4 and up as alternative to the DVD. The problem of refusing to install from a CD (boots but then complains that it can't see the installation CD) is well-documented on the www but I didn't find that any of the suggested fixed worked for me. Running from HD works fine - I just copied the whole install CD to a partition and ran it there, no different to running it from any other drive. Sadly (?) it still asks for CDs 2,3,4 even if you also copy them to the HD but I might experiment with this again out of interest.
The Software Update failure is fairly well documented too and the usual suggestion is to download and run the package. This worked for me too. Running the 10.4.11 combo fixed that so likely just one of the funnies in 10.4.
I found that the failure to shutdown was because file /sbin/halt was damaged. So also was /sbin/reboot. I've replaced those with the files from the install CD and that seems to do the trick, I don't understand why the install corrupted them but I suppose it's possible that I did it myself by pulling the switch when OSX failed to shut down originally. Fsck didn't help but anyway it's fine now
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Well, it was sort of fine!
I decided to do a bit of exploring and found a few more damaged files (permissions were ---------) so I wrote a script to copy the offending files from the installation CD1.
All seems well now, all software updates installed OK. Nice to have this old machine running
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