Helping a colleague today and got a nasty message about MySql  not being happy.    Googled a bit of the error message itself and found helpful solutions online.    We had to modify the joomla.sql file from the Installation folder,  changing TYPE=MyISAM   to   ENGINE=MyISAM throughout the file.  

I had a Query Tool for Postgres that let me open the .sql file.   It did not want to open in a simple text editor.

The “repaired”  joomla.sql file allowed the installation to proceed.   Apparently this was a conflict between joomla 1.5.22  and the newest versions of MAMP and MySQL.