Chapter 8: (re-)Installing the OS

Since the computer was filled with personal data from the previous user I decided to install MacOS (without X) 7.5.3 on it. Thats the OS it was shipped with, so that made sense to me. To do that I downloaded a setup/recovery CD from Winworldpc, burnt it on a blank disk, put it into the machine and selected reboot. During boot I held the

// c //

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button on the keyboard to boot directly from the CD.

And nothing happened. So I downloaded a different image from the Internet Archive, also burnt it to a disk, put it in and selected reboot. Held

// c //

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again and nothing happened again. This is the point where I had to admit that I burnt 3 more CDs and tried holding down different keys before it occurred to me that the drive might be bad.

So I booted it up once again, plopped in an audio CD and started the CD player program. That quickly confirmed that there's something wrong with the drive. As luck would have it I had another IDE CD drive sitting on a shelf in my workshop, so I shut the mac down again and connected that one to it. As soon as I put an audio CD into that drive and hit play I could hear music coming from the front speaker of the machine.

Apple music player with nothing playing.

A CD drive with the LG-logo on the front sitting on top of another CD drive.

A CD drive with the LG-logo on the front sitting on top of another CD drive.

Apple music player showing playback of Track 01 at 00:39

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I made a mental note to fix the original drive and went ahead with installing MacOS from CD with the replacement drive. Putting the CD in, selecting restart and holding

// c //

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now worked as expected. I went ahead and tried to re-initialize the drive but it seems like the mac didn't really like that all that much. I guess it didn't expect the drive to be an SD card. It froze completely and I had to shut it down by pressing the power button.

To make my life easier and to make sure there's no personal data from other people on the computer after I'm done I pulled out the SD card and formatted it on my Laptop. That way it's seen as a blank disk by the mac.

After a reboot I decided to use the disk first aid program to re-initialize the disk for a change, which seemed to do the trick. It seems very un-apple to have the same feature in two different locations. But maybe they're different and I just misunderstood what they do.

The desktop of the apple recovery disk.

A window called drive setup where the left half is white, indicating that something went wrong.

Popup: Initializing will erase all information on this disk.

Disk First Aid with a successful volume verification.

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Now I could finally start the installation process itself. I went with the

// Restore System Software //

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option because it sounded quicker than

// Restore All Software //

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. After that I hit "restart" and took out the CD so it doesn't boot from it again. After that it went right back up with the new installation.

I checked if the version number is actually what it said on the CD and then wen ahead to mess around in the settings for a while.

Reinstalling files onto the hard disk window with a pink progress bar below.

You have successfully restored your files window with restart-button below.

The CD drive ontop of the other one with its drive tray out.

MacOS starting up in English.

About this Macintosh windows showing software version 7.5.3

An empty desktop with wallpaper of tiled blue cats.

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