Is it possible to create a bootable installation partition for a PowerPC mac using an Intel-based Mac?

Solution 1:

Maybe this link helps to accomplish what you described: Installing OSX onto PPC using Intel Mac and Firewire

If it works, let us know.

Solution 2:

Yes. We did this all the time back in the day and it was very fussy. The problem wasn’t so much the process of restoring and blessing as much as the issue is firmware drivers and differences in chipsets on Macs as well as controllers in the USB and FireWire external drives. This all interacted in ways that made booting even more fussy than if the drive worked after the system was up and running.

Brands like LaCie and G-TECH tended to work more universally than others, but it was hit or miss if one drive would work with any arbitrary Mac.

That was when everything was new and hardware failures in the boards and cables and drives (and let’s limo in aging / flakey devices with failing ones). You may have to have multiple devices now to get repeatable results if age is making them less consistent.

My only recommendation is take excellent notes as you triage things and know this process wasn’t a slam dunk when new due to several very technical details down to which of several manufacturers made the same “part” inside your Mac. To do what you mention reliably, you would consider every single firmware and part in the boot chain from the CPU to the storage.