Installing OS X from an external CD-ROM

[Neocon]

I have a powerbook G4 500. My optical drive has died and I have been using an external firewire CD burner to read cd's. (The firewire burner is by A Com)

I wanted to upgrade to OS X from OS 9.2 so I booted up the machine while pushing the option key. Selected the OS X cd as the startup disk which was in the external firewire burner. Having backed up my files I went to the disk utility app and erased my hard drive and then partitioned it into two 15gig partitions. Then I installed OS X on one of the partitions.

While OS X was installing I walked away and came back to
a blue folder that flashes back and forth between a question mark and and the old school OS 9 logo. What gives and what should I do? I've read through the Support files on MAC.com and found nothing of help.

Thanks,
Nathaniel

[jeffhot]

If you were attempting to install OS 10.2, it was probably done with the first disk, when it attempts to boot to the new OS on the HD, then it will prompt you for Disk 2. The flashing question mark folder of course means that the System folder can't be found.

What's I'd try is this: First, restart while holding the option key. Hopefully you will see a HD with an X on it. Select that and startup. If it works and you are prompted for Disk 2, put it in and go for it.

If not, try this: boot from any bootable CD and run some diagnostics on the HD. OS X's Disk Utility, Norton, TechTool, DiskWarrior, whatever. See if you have some HD problems and fix them. Then see if you can boot from the HD.

Lastly, try installing again. And be thankful that your FireWire CD-RW is bootable, as mine is not and having also had a dead DVD drive with the same machine, it is not so easy to do those type of things. Except of course that my roomate has the same one and I can borrow his drive module and just plug it in! Beat that TiBook owners! :P:

[Neocon]

Thanks soo much for your help. I greatly apprecaite it.