hi.
I'll just give my opinion on the OSX installer.
for me the best version of OSX is Snow Leopard.
cheers.

Hello,

This machine can boot from USB. I've done it to install Snow Leopard, Leopard, and Tiger off of USB drives. I got this machine off of Kraigslist from some guy who didn't bother to give me install disks. I had to find dmg files for Leopard and Snow Leopard and I bought a Tiger disk which appears to have disappeared. (I hate people that move my crap around at random.)

Anyway, are you saying I can't use a USB drive to install XP? I have an XP ISO image. Also, how do I go about formating the drive as fat32? I don't think OS X supports that unless you do it through terminal?

edit

Oh, I'm an idiot! You can format disks as fat. I was thinking NTFS. So, I don't know anymore. This seems way too complicated. If only Microslop actually cared enough to make the installer talk. I really don't want to have to fish out an external monitor. So, the current talking preinstallation packages don't even run the XP install program? Wow, I don't know. My first idea was to see if I could even get a talking PE to load up and talk. If I can't even do that, it looks like I'll have to get someone to help. Also, I don't have disks and don't really feel like buying some.

Well, that just stops everything. I don't really have DVDs and don't feel like buying any. At this point, I don't even know if putting XP on this is worth it anymore. So, I don't know. It's sad that Snow Leopard (which is just about as old is Windows 7) is more obsolete even though SL is a superior OS.

Well, now what? Is this machine just lost?

Hello,

Would it be possible to put the Talking PE environment on the Mac drive on an MBR fat32 partition and then boot from that?

I thought Sebby said that you can't boot those old intel macs with MBR partition schemes. I tried using that Windows program once but it made an NTFS drive. I just tired to run the XP iso I have in Vmware. It opens the install program, but pressing enter or space on the install button just has NVDA speak press. Is this the thingwhere I need to do the command line?

Mmm, you still need a bootable Windows OS to get it going. That means a CD. Trust me, my 2011 iMac couldn't do MBR USB boot, either. Although I'm not exactly sure what might happen if you try to start the UEFI loader on the Mac from USB. Maybe, if you did, and it worked, and maybe if you could run diskpart and XP's winnt32, you might at least be able to put an XP Setup directory on the internal disk, if not entirely complete the install. Then the next time you rebooted the box, you'd be in XP Setup, which you could have unattended, or a complete install, which you could get going with USB audio.

Or better! You could, if you have the CD and floppy drive, make the entire process unattended, from a blank internal drive.

I have to admit, at this point I'd need to call on lots of esoteric knowledge that I might not have. Will have to look into it, but hopefully others on here have input.

NVDA says "Press"? Where does it say that?

Will the 32-bit Bryan Smart installer boot from DVD? Ah, the DVD again ...

If it shows up as a USB audio device in OS X, then the likelihood is good that it's fine for USB audio in Windows.

You could check by formatting these disks then burning something to them. If they eject, then they're cd roms, thus not rewriteable. If they burn, then the'yre rewriteable.

So, can these disks be overwritten with new data? I actually have to find these, since it looks like someone moved them on me.

I agree, it probably was a scam. Still, I got the guy to send me another set for free. He had no idea why they wouldn't install. I found out it was because the list of allowed machines that came with the config file had iMac 5,1 or something like that in the supported machines list. I think it was a restore disk for that particular machine. Still, silly Apple made it difficult to install on other machines even though the version functions perfectly well on my Mini. Silly silly Apple. As for the Mac, it probably was a scam as well. At least it's in pretty good condition though. It appears to be pretty maxed out aside from the ram which is actually pretty cool. I love this machine as it was my first experience with running Mac OS X.

All right, so here's what I'm dealing with currently. I can't find any disks and don't feel like digging any up either off the internet or just around here. As I see it, I have two options. Either I scrap this whole stupid attempt or I try my next idea.

About a year ago, someone showed me how it is possible to put bootable copies of OS X on an internal partition and boot from them to install the operating system on other internal partitions. Since the issue appears to be that I need a disk to boot the Windows installer, would it be possible to create a 1 or 2 GB partition on the hard drive and copy the contents of the iso image to it with CCC or disk utility? I'm assuming that this should work since Windows has to boot from the disk once it's installed. Would this work and land me in the XP install wizard? At this point, I've given up on these talking preinstallation images since they don't seem to work on my Macs. So, would this work? I'll resort to getting my mom or dad to guide me through the install. Yes, I lose independence, but that's what you deal with when you enter Windows world. So, does this work or should I just walk away from this machine and forget about it? This is seriously my last idea for installing Windows without disks. I wish it didn't have to be this way, but I don't want to get rid of this computer because it still works flawlessly. As with everything else, the operating systems are obsolete to me simply because many popular applications and the internet don't work anymore, even on Snow Leopard. Then again, XP isn't modern either, but I could find more uses for it than obsolete versions of OS X that don't run anything.

All right then. I guess it's time to find some optical disks. I can't help but think this is a big giant waste of time. How do I get the Bootcamp drivers? It says to insert my OS X installation disk. I just want to have these around whenever I find disks. Can I extract the drivers from my Snow Leopard dmg? It's got 10.6 initial on it.

edit

Ok, here's the deal. I found the following on Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Maxell-635117-Rew … B000B0NC2W
So, should I spend the $13.33 USD? My XP image is only 670 mb or something like that.

Yes, you ought to be able to extract the BootCamp drivers from your Snow Leopard image, using a tool like TheUnarchiver. If you're having any trouble, just let me know and I'll MailDrop them to you.

Buy those DVD-RW discs. Or go cheaper and buy DVD-R, it hardly matters if you're going to chuck most of them anyway (bad for the environment ...).

Apple sells the latest Snow Leopard disc (10.6.3). It does not work on all machines that run Snow Leopard, but it will work just fine on yours.