Success: iLife 06 on a G3
It's possible. Here's what you need:
2 Macs, at least one of which has a DVD drive.
1 6-pin to 6-pin firewire cable. You may think you have one, but I bet you don't. Roughly $30 at Best Buy if you're impatient like me.
1 iLife '06 DVD
You have to be able to copy the iLife package installer to your hard drive. I had countless issues with this. It wouldn't copy, wouldn't make a disk image, nothing. So I had to resort to Target Mode to get it to work. If you can actually get the damned thing to copy successfully, you can skip Target Mode and go right to the bottom of the blog entry.
Now, I only installed iPhoto and iWeb on the G3. Chances are if iMovie, iDVD, etc even open, they will be VERY VERY slow. iPhoto, on the other hand, works like a charm. And remember, if you only have one copy of iLife, I think you can only legally install it on one machine.
Copying from Target Mode
Okay, the first thing to do is take the Mac you DON'T want to install iLife on and pop in the iLife DVD. This Mac is now your Target Drive.
Now turn off both of your Macs.
Next, turn on the Target Mac and make sure you hold the T key down. You'll get a blue screen with a yellow Firewire symbol that sort of flits around.
The G3 on which you want to install iLife is your Host machine.
Hook up the Firewire cable between the two.
Turn on your Host machine.
You'll see your Target drive on your Host machine. It shows up as an external Firewire drive, which is pretty cool. I suspect this could be a useful function in the future.
The iLife installer will probably launch automatically. If not, launch it so you see the Welcome screen. Don't actually open the package.
Copy the Installer package to the Desktop of the Host machine. This took me forever, but it worked.
Making it work on the G3
Once the Installer package is on your desktop, you need to modify the Distribution.dist file.
Right-click on the Installer on your desktop and select Open Package Contents.
Once open, double-click the Contents folder.
Right-click on Distribution.dist and choose Open With ...
Select the Text Editor from your Applications.
In Text Editor, delete the following:
// Rule out insufficient hardware
if ( !hasAcceptableHardware() )
{
my.result.title = system.localizedString(’TITLEINCOMPATHW’);
my.result.message = system.localizedString(’ERRORINCOMPATHW’);
my.result.type = �Fatal’;
return false;
}
Save the file and close.
Close out the package contents.
Double-click the Installer package on your desktop to install.
Remember, I customized the install to only install iPhoto and iWeb. (I did this during the actual install steps. There was a Custom button or some such thing.)
Thanks to Hard Mac's Blog and the Apple Knowledge Base for helping me put these steps together.
that target thing comes in mighty handy when one has a logic board meltdown and hasn't backed up her machine lately. :)
of course, had i not been working with a mac guy, i never would have figured that out. woo!
Posted by: kara | 08 March 2006 at 10:12 PM