I am very new to Linux. I had never seen it until I started up an old iMac I bought second-hand. I don't know who the previous owner was - flea market sale. I managed to figure out that he/she had installed Debian on it.

I would prefer to reinstall Mac OS. I'm really not sure how to proceed.

Do I uninstall Debian first? If so, how?

Do I "zero the mbr"? That sounds like something I should avoid but I really don't know. I couldn't find any clear direction from my google search.

I tried to boot from mac OS disk but it just goes to a blank blue screen.

Any suggestions/help would be appreciated.

You have to boot from the mac disk in order to install it
you have to reformat the harddrisk in order to get rid of debian, I don't belive its necessary to zero the mbr

Hi.

Before you can just replace Debian with OS X, you should make sure that the "old iMac" has the specs (preferably at least 128MB RAM for panther, and twice that for tiger). Some of the really old iMacs might have less ram (they had minimum of 64MB). Even on a G3 with 128MB it can take an os x installer cd a long time to come up.

On some old models, there needs to be a firmware update to run os x. On these models, you have to install classic first, and use classic to download and install the firmware update... then try to install os x.

The existing debian install would not interfere with an os x install, so the best place for further details would be at

http://discussions.apple.com/

Thanks globaltree. Your info was really helpful. I think I've got it solved. I'm in the process now of booting the mac from the OS disks.

Cheers!