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normanhilda 0 Junior Poster in Training

Hi I am trying to up grade to Tiger, I have the DVD but I have to have an external drive player.Mine will only read CD. I have tried to buy one but cannot find one compatible with 10.3.9 Be glad of some help. Norm.

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Dani AI

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For and anyone with a Panther-era tower and a Tiger DVD but no DVD-capable internal drive: practical, tested options and a few gotchas.

The easiest reliable route is to use another Mac with a working optical drive and FireWire. Determine the tower’s model/architecture first (Apple menu > About This Mac > More Info). Connect the two Macs with a FireWire cable, start the tower while holding the T key to enter Target Disk Mode, and the tower’s internal disk will mount on the other Mac. On the host Mac run the Tiger installer and choose the mounted drive as the install target. If formatting is needed, use Disk Utility: format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and pick the partition scheme that matches the tower’s CPU — Apple Partition Map for PowerPC machines, GUID Partition Table for Intel machines — otherwise it will not be bootable.

If no second Mac is available, an external optical drive with FireWire is the next-best choice for older PowerPC towers; many PPC machines will not boot from USB-only optical drives. For Intel-era machines, USB DVD burners are usually fine. If buying, prefer a drive advertised with FireWire for PPC Macs or test compatibility before finalizing the purchase.

Two important cautions: factory “restore” DVDs tied to a specific Mac model will refuse to install on other models — a retail Tiger disc is required for general installs. Back up all data before attempting any install. Finally, Tiger is long out of support; if hardware permits, consider upgrading to a later official Mac OS X release or using a lightweight Linux distribution for better security and software availability.

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