As the subject heading reads.

When I made my bootable USB stick the first time around, I performed it under OSX 10.4.11 Tiger. I used Disk Utility, sudo, dd, and of course the mini.iso.

But then I tried to install MintPPC 11 via USB and failed. So then I tried to revert back to MintPPC 9.3. However, I realized that now I had no real way to format and then burn the mini.iso to my USB stick. So, I brought out my Windows PC (laptop) and tried everywhich way to format and "burn" the mini.iso onto the USB stick, but now my iMac won't even boot from it, even though I used the proper parameters and paths as shown when I boot into the Open Firmware.

What I notice is that Open Firmware complains about the USB stick's format.

I used dd for Windows, (http://www.chrysocome.net/dd), but every time i use it, it keeps producing the USB stick in a format that Open Firmware on the iMac G3 doesn't like.

So, to ask my question again: is there any way to prepare a bootable USB stick for PPC computers like my iMac G3 from within a Windows PC?

I could only make it work from within Linux on a PPC based machine. I would, if I were you, boot into a live environment and do it from there:

http://live.debian.net/archive/images/6 ... werpc/iso/

Edit: Just to let you know, the Wheezy installer won't let you install Wheezy correctly now. You have to manually adjust yaboot. Once again, I am not going to help with such things. If you don't know how to do it, this is not for you. The best thing to do is to install Squeeze and to dist-upgrade to Wheezy and to then follow the manual installation instructions I posted.

A "Live CD".... why didn't i think of that!!! D'oh!

Btw... now that you mention it, after reviewing the instructions for MintPPC 9.2 for the USB installation, when you said to "make the USB stick empty" in Gparted, i noticed that you didn't specify what is a good choice of which format (filesystem) to use. Obviously, it has to be something that my computer can recognize. Were you implying that dd doesn't care what filesystem the USB stick is formatted with before i burn the selected iso image onto it? What format do you normally use?

You don't necessarily need to empty it. I never put a filesystem on it, just create a new partition table and all is gone. Dd doesn't care at all what is on it. It will simply write over it again.

Unfortunately, doing just those steps that you mentioned simply results in a USB stick that can't get past the 2nd stage bootstrap..... well.... at least for my iMac G3.

The picture below depicts what really want I want to accomplish for the long-run, to prepare for all the multiple iterations of MintPPC. I easily get confused, while juggling the task of working in the terminal with mac-fdisk, Gparted, and even when I'm fully booted into the MintPPC desktop, working visually with the Disk Utility. I have the most difficulty, particularly in trying to figure out which partition needs to be the bootable, booting, bootstrap, such that if it doesn't work, i'll give it the ****-ing boot!!! (sorry, hehehe!). I can't tell the difference between Apple Partition Map, Apple_Bootstrap, a "bootable" partition flag...... and I can't even tell of the "partition label" (as seen in the Disk Utility program) has any actual bearing on whether the resulting USB stick will boot and get past the 2nd stage bootstrap step.

ARGH! O_O

I once achieved in making a live USB stick, you can use that information:
viewtopic.php?f=10&t=337#8
scroll down to the 8th post.

You will also need to know more about old fashioned yaboot and stuff:
http://mac.linux.be/content/yaboot

I think it is possible what you want, but I have never tried it.