Booting Leopard from external USB hdd

[Unbehagen]

Hi all,

I'm trying to install OS X Leopard on my Thinkpad T43p. I'm using this release to install:

http://osx.kbot.de/comments.php?Disc...&page=1#Item_0 , because it is for machines that don't come with SSE3 which my Pentium M probably doesn't understand. As my hdd is small, I want to install OS X to an external USB drive. The installation went well. I formatted the external drive (with MBR, not GUID) and installed OS X. I customized the Installation and told it to install the MBR bootloader. My Laptop is able to boot from USB but when I select the USB drive as the primary boot device in the bios list, it loads until after the BIOS screen and then hangs with a blank prompt and the blinking _ sign in the top left corner.

I think my problem is either related to MBR problems (maybe I need another boot loader on that drive like Grub?) or to problems of my laptop booting from USB.

Does anyone have an idea what I might do about this?

Sorry for asking here. I've been googling around for a while now but it's not that easy to find useful information about this. Not many people seem to want OS X on an external hdd.

Thanks a lot for your patience and help.

[00diabolic]

You have a bootloader problem like mine. However you are on an AMD system and i am on intel.Check the following:

 

1. Did you name the partition anything more then a 1 word name. No "Mac OSX" must be "OSX" or "Leopard". 1 word name only.

 

2. Do you have a second partition on that drive? Try to install it with only creating 1 partition and not 2. Seems to be an issue sometimes when marking the first partition active.

 

3. Your partition may simply not be active. Do this:

 

Go to Disk utility and unmount all drives on the target installed USB disk.

 

Then Go to terminal on the Leopard DVD you have & type:

 

sudo -s (type password) <-- may not be needed if you boot from DVD.

 

Type: fdisk -e /dev/rdiskX (where X is the drive you are installing on, check in disk utility under information)

 

"Hit ENTER"

 

Type: flag X (Where X is the partition you want active. 1 if you are doing MBR and 2 if you are doing GUID)

 

"Hit ENTER"

 

Type: u or update

 

"Hit ENTER"

 

Type: w or write"

 

Hit ENTER"

 

Type: q or quit"

 

Hit ENTER"

 

Try a reboot now and see what happens. If your still SOL write back here.

 

Your in the same boat as me if the above does not work.