One of the Macs I have here at the house is an older Power Mac G4. I use it in my ham shack and have been blissfully running OS X 10.3.6 for years now. Recently though, there have been more and software popping up out there that require 10.4 so I guess I’m gonna bite the bullet and update this old machine. The problem is that this Mac doesn’t have a DVD drive. Does anyone out there (MacTech) know of a way to upgrade over the network? I guess I could just spring for an external drive but I was hoping that a geekier solution existed.
And look at DVD ROMs and RWs. You’ll find they are pretty cheap, and even the internal ones are darned easy to swap in a G4 Tower. (about 10 minutes to do.) I’ve swapped hard drives and the DVD in mine several times with ease.
A quick look at eBay found DVD RW for $30 and DVD ROM for $10, plus shipping.
If you have a copy of Tiger (10.4) on DVD, you can exchange it for a CD-ROM version. This form [PDF] has the details (I believe it will cost you 10 bones, unfortunately).
If you go for a DVD RW you may need Patchburn as not all devices are supported as burners by OS X. I used this on a friends G4 and it worked a charm.