Apple G4 start up probelms.

Lynsey

Sorry to pester you guys again but a new problem.
I have my son's G4 and I'm trying to find the spec so I can get rid of it on ebay. I'm having start up problems, initially it shows a file with a ? and a sad face, then a large black box stating, "You need to restart your computer". Done this several times and same appears. I don't have the OS discs - any ideas please??
Software or hardware??

Thanks in advance,

Lynsey

Leopard

The sad Mac icon with a question mark is its way of saying it can't find a drive with a working system from which to boot up.

If you provide more information about the Mac it will be more possible to assist you.

Lynsey

Fire away, what do you need??
Be gentle though.

Lynsey

Leopard

Well, is it a tower, is it a laptop or is it a Cube?

And how old - or what year - is it?

What is its Serial Number? This should be written on a small plate or label, attached to it somewhere.

(Note: I'm about to install a new operating system and will be offline for a while. :coffee: )

Lynsey

It's a tower.

It's pretty old, at least 7 years old.

Serial No. CK011161HSG

Thanks,

Lynsey

almillar

I'll make a stab at a PowerMac G4 then. Does it look like this?

As Leopard says, it can't find an operating system to start from. Either something has been badly damaged software wise, or your hard drive has failed. Normal advice would be to put in your OSX (are you running OSX or the old MacOS?!) CD or DVD and run the diagnostic programme, but you state you have no discs. I don't think anyone will be able to help you diagnose this further unless you take it to a friend who speaks Mac and has the resources available to diagnose and repair...

Leopard

Your Mac's Serial # (CK011161HSG) identifies it as a G4 Power Mac (AGP Graphics) manufactured in March 2000 at Apple's assembly plant in Cork, Ireland.

It's an M7629 "Sawtooth" - a model sold by Apple between September 1999 and July 2000.

Yours had a 500 MHz PowerPC processor, a 27 GB hard drive, 256 MB of RAM and a bus speed of 100 MHz when it was shipped.

It was built to run Apple's (now obsolete) Mac System 9 and with that specification could probably run Mac OS 10.2 Jaguar quite happily.

If it's been upgraded at all it might run Mac OS 10.3 Panther but Mac OS 10.4 Tiger would likely be beyond it.

(That said, I have OS 10.5.8 running on a 2001 vintage 400 MHz G4 PowerBook with 1 GB of RAM, but it's pushing a big rock up a steep hill to do it.)

It's easy enough to open it up and remove the hard drive for examination, or to start it in Target mode (hold down the 'T" key on an attached keyboard when pressing the "On" button) which would enable another Mac attached to it by a Firewire lead to scrutinise its hard drive. It could also be booted from an external Firewire hard drive with a Mac OS on it.

Alternatively, you could look on eBay for a Mac OS 10.2 install CD and then try reformatting the hard drive and installing a system on it.

Really, though, as almillar advised, you need to seek out someone local who understands Macs and understands how to do those things.

The real problem lies in how old it is. Not many people still have the bits necessary to fix it.

In working condition it would be worth about £35 - but it would be a pig to ship!

almillar

My advice about a knowledgeable person was more about the software side of things. If it is hardware it's likely to be a hard drive - that means an IDE desktop drive - these are very easy and cheap to get hold of on eBay