Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with mac and g4

Powerbook: No Logo

DiscourseMarker — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 09:41:28 -0800

Powerbook G4 won't boot up. I hear the chime, get a gray screen, but NO apple logo or spinning wheel. This is a circa- late 2003 1.25GHz PB running OS 10.5. something. Yesterday, my husband was trying to open some Word 2008 docs he had saved on this laptop. Word would not open, it just kept bouncing in the dock, and we could not get it to force quit, so he did a forced shut down of the computer. Ever since then I cannot get the computer to boot past the gray screen.

I have tried resetting the PRAM, but it still sticks at the gray screen, same with resetting the PMU and trying a safe boot. It never progresses to the Apple Logo, just stays on the gray screen. When I pressed my ear to the keyboard I heard a few clicks from the HD after trying to start up, but now there's no sound.

Any suggestions?

Laptop case compatibility

silkygreenbelly — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 19:11:34 -0800

Will the lower exterior case and optical drive from a mac powerbook G4 12inch 867 MHz be compatible with a mac powerbook G4 12inch 1.5Ghz? My powerbook G4 12inch aluminum 1.5Ghz has some issues. It is going to need a new optical drive and lower exterior case and power adapter (looooong story). Costs a lot to get the replacement parts individually. I found someone nearby offering a powerbook g4 12inch aluminum 867MHz for cheaper than ordering individual pieces would be. Before I go rearranging my schedule to see it, I'm wondering if the case and optical drive are compatible?

Is this powerbook worth the money?

shopefowler — Tue, 05 May 2009 19:57:28 -0800

Is this 2002 titanium PowerBook g4 worth the money? I'm strapped for cash, but I've got the opportunity to purchase it for about $300. I'm a freelance graphic designer, and I'd like to install CS3 on it (if it'll install on a PowerPC) but will really only use it on vacation and not for intense tasks.

Assume it runs fine on Tiger, needs a new battery and needs a memory upgrade (to 1G). Think it's a good buy or not worth the $$?

Wireless keyboard for G4 Mini?

caution live frogs — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 05:44:18 -0800

Trying to find a keybaord / mouse combo for a G4 Mac Mini (no IR, no bluetooth) that will work in a living room PC without costing me an arm and a leg. Recommendations? Short story: Wife will be having the baby in the near future (due on three weeks!). Computer is downstairs in the basement. I'm in the process of refurbishing a 1st-generation G4 Mac Mini which I plan to connect to our LCD TV for her to use as a computer, for web / email access, to keep her from having to drag the kid up and down the stairs just to get online.

Mini was a freebie, needed a new HD (done). Leopard installed, runs fine, TV has an RGB input for use as a monitor, and I've already dropped a Cat5 cable into our living room so the thing will be wired into our home network.

Basically my little Mother's Day present is all set except for the input devices - I need a keyboard and mouse combo that will work in our living room. She'll likely be sitting about 8-9 feet from the Mini.

I'm leaning towards the Microsoft Laser Wireless for Mac keyboard. Had also considered the Kensington Ci70.

Both are about in the price range I'd be happy with, and I do prefer Microsoft's mouse shapes over Kensington, but (a) the MS setup has some poor reviews for range and connectivity from some people, and (b) the Kensington layout is PC-specific with an Apple key tacked on in the bottom corner. I'd prefer a native Apple layout.

Searching for keyboards online has given me hundreds of PC keyboard combos that work on a Mac but aren't native layout, and every time I find something that might work it turns out to want Bluetooth. (Yes, I could get a BT dongle, and I might eventually, but for now I just want something that works out of the box!)

Any help? I'm trying to keep this a surprise...

Can I give my Mac laptop a newer operating system?

kim in chicago — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 13:57:18 -0800

How can I "upgrade" my Mac PowerBook G4's OS 10.3.9 to at least a 10.4.9 in order to install MS Office Home & Student Edition? I had to replace my 5-6 year old hard drive and the laptop is now working well. The old hard drive had MS Office for Mac installed on it and the new one doesn't, of course. The MS Office system requirements say I need a minimum of 10.4.9 to install the program. Is there anything I can do to the laptop (get a different hard drive, install more memory, etc.) that will get the OS up to at least 10.4.9? I really only need MS Word and internet ability so I'm trying to avoid buying a new laptop, if possible.

Is this iBook toast?

clockwork — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:55:16 -0800

The hard drive in my girlfriend's iBook (12" G4 late 2004) died, or at least that's what I think happened. I want to cover all my bases and I need a little advice on best practices. A few months ago it would make a gnarly clicking sound, but only intermittently. We backed up all her data, figuring that the hard drive was going to fail pretty soon, but the clicking went away and everything was fine until this week when it seemed like it was running a little hot and then went totally catatonic.

After it first died, Disk Utility (running from OSX install discs) couldn't even see the drive and Apple Hardware Test returned a variety of Mass Storage "2STF" errors. After it cooled down, Disk Utility was able to see the drive, but it didn't return any errors and it passed the first Hardware Test but failed every subsequent time I ran it. I have been able to boot from the drive when the computer is totally cold, but I've never left it running for very long. I'm a little puzzled by the symptoms. I would expect the hard drive to stop working altogether.

Did I miss any totally obvious fixes? or troubleshooting steps that might indicate something other than the hard drive?

She would rather spend $65 on a new hard drive than $1k for a new MacBook. And while I have a vested interest in taking the thing apart, I don't want let my impulse to fiddle about inside the thing color my thinking about the problem itself. Thanks.

I can't read my book.

tylerfulltilt — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 12:44:08 -0800

Is my g4 iBook forked? I've had this machine for awhile now. It's a g4 iBook, 1ghz processor, 1gig of ram, bluetooth, wifi. And today it started acting up.

I can power it on. It will go to the dark gray screen, then it will go to the light gray screen with the dark grey apple in the middle. Then the little processing wheel will come up beneath it, the little "Hang on I'm thinking" wheel that pulses in a circle. Then a different screen comes up that tells me my computer needs to be restarted.

I've powered off and back on at least twenty different times to no avail. The computer will never fully boot up because it always thinks it needs to be restarted. I've tried taking out the battery and re inserting it. I've also tried running without the battery solely on ac power. None of that worked. I've tried the aboce in combination with holding the 4 bottom left keys and that didn't work either.

Does anyone have idea how to fix this?
If my Laptop is forked is there anyway I can salvage the data on the hard drive?

Okay, so plate spring on vocals only?

Cantdosleepy — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:22:48 -0800

Please help get my old iBook to be as fast as possible! Hey all,

I've had an iBook G4 14" 1.42GHz for a few years now (bought it about a month before they switched to Intel chips). I haven't treated it super-kindly (the day-to-day account is also the admin account, since I didn't realise you were meant to make yourself a limited user account; I've installed and uninstalled all sorts of software of varying quality; and I've made it a bittorrent packhorse for days at a time) and the battery was on the point of dying. I recently put a new battery in, and now that I'm not permanently tethered to the wall I'm enthused about fixing the machine up to get it as fast as possible.

I've been using the DAW Reaper for a few months now and like it a lot. Unfortunately my computer isn't fast enough to do any audio effects work - every channel has to be clean or the program judders and overloads.

My goal for this project is to be able to use Reaper and Reason ReWired together for recording sketches in my bedroom. Nothing too ambitious - I'm not talking about running bitcrunchers, choruses and delays on dozens of channels - I'd just like the ability to use panning, compression and reverb on four or five tracks to make things sit nicely together.

So how do I squeeze out the speed? Will reinstalling the OS help? I've already got the maximum amount of RAM that this computer will hold. What processes run in the background that I don't need? Does the Quicksilver launcher eat up a lot of memory (I currently use it)? Would installing Leopard be a bunch faster, or would that money be better spent elsewhere? Can I tell the computer to prioritise one program at the expense of others? Should I set up a separate user account for recording that has almost everything disabled that isn't needed for ReapsonWire?

Aside from music making I'll be using this machine to cruise the internet, watch '.avi' files and write bits and pieces - so nothing too demanding.

Any and all tips considered. Thanks!

Got them low down dirty Kernel panic blues

cosmicbandito — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:55:19 -0800

Mac OS X kernel panic shortly after boot on G4 iMac. How do I troubleshoot this? Every time I boot my G4, it kernel panics after about 5 minutes. Doesn't seem to matter what's running. I tried reading the kernel panic log, but don't see anything helpful. What's the best way to go about getting this fixed? I'm a Mac noob, but am good with Windows and reasonably proficient with *nix and command line stuff.

Help me listen to my music ... please?

chairish — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 01:38:15 -0800

Tossing an idea around here ... I'd like to use my old Powerbook as a media server for my Windows network. 1. Me - Vista Business notebook, brand new. I also use an eeePC when I go away.
2. Beloved - almost new XP Pro notebook
3. Son - teenager at home - aging XP Pro desktop, aging Pocket PC, Windows compatible phone
4. Daughter - comes and goes - aging XP Pro notebook

And I have a spare G4 Powerbook that, although three and a half years old, is running nicely.

What I want to do is somehow turn the Powerbook into a media server for our Windows machines. We are a wireless household and we all love our music and movies (currently over 100GB of each on an external hard drive - NTFS). I'd love to be able to use the Powerbook as some sort of server for our media. Ideas?

Is it my iBook battery or something more sinister?

kmtiszen — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 06:51:17 -0800

iBook G4 battery is out of juice. Computer won't start up... even when AC adapter is plugged in. Is there something else going on? I'm going to be purchasing a MacBook soon, but I'd first want to unload my old G4. It's about four-years-old and the battery, to my best knowledge, is pretty much kaput. I can't even get the computer to start up when the AC power adapter is plugged in. Is this a symptom of the battery's age or do you think there's some deeper issue here? Could the adapter port be mangled beyond repair?

I'd like to replace the battery before selling... it's still a great machine when it's up and running. But if it's not the battery, I'd rather not go through the hassle and just sell the silly thing for parts.

Any advice is really appreciated!

Thanks!

Should I buy a used 12" G4 Powerbook as a stopgap machine?

stackhaus23 — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 15:33:57 -0800

Macfilter: Thinking of buying a 12" G4 Powerbook, is this irrational thinking? I need a new laptop, quite badly. However, it really is for nothing more than sitting at our local haunt, in the living room with my girlfriend while she watches TV or friends houses that have Wi-Fi etc and browsing the internet, showing them photographs or things I'm working on.

I was kind of hoping that today Steve Jobs was also going to announce the much talked about but never appearing line of aluminium Macbooks which I had every intention of buying the cheapest model. But since I still feel they are around the corner, I don't want to buy the current plastic Macbook if in a month or two it's going to be out of date - especially since I can't bare to think I might spend £700 ($1400) on something that's just used for the internet. So is it irrational to buy something like a 2006 G4 just because it's cheap at £250 ($500) just as a stopgap. I'd only buy the top spec model, 1.5 G4 PowerPC - and I realise that it's totally redundant technology but it's only to use for the next year or so.

Could I even run Leopard on it? What kind of drawbacks would it bring other than things being optimised for Intel chips now? Are there any users that can testify it's merits or it's weaknesses?

I have no intention of going back to a Windows based machine so that debate doesn't even come into it. The other two machines I use for Graphic Design are also Macs.

Resell an ibook: fix it?

The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 16:09:03 -0800

A question about reselling an ibook g4 with a broken screen. I'm in the market for a new laptop (probably looking at a macbook, yes I will wait until after WWDC), most notably because the screen on my ibook g4 is horribly broken. But here's the question: is it worth it to try and replace the screen before I resell it? I can probably manage this for around $130, but don't know if the resell value will be boosted enough to make it worth my while.

also, what is a fair price to ask for a 14'' ibook g4 running Tiger with a 60g HDD, 512 MB RAM and a 1.42ghz processor? (both with good screen and a bum screen, if possible). I'll most likely be selling on craigslist or ebay.

Mac Powermac G4 AGP will not boot, can I take the drive and boot using a firewire enclosure on another G5?

safepants — Mon, 26 May 2008 09:38:14 -0800

Mac Powermac G4 AGP will not boot, can I take the drive and boot using a firewire enclosure on another G5? I've tried replacing the CMOS battery and resetting the PMU which didn't work. I really need to boot from this drive to use the files immediately, then take the data off afterwards.

Can I boot with this drive in a firewire enclosure using a G5, or does it have to be another similar G4 system? would a powerbook g4 work too?

one signal bar, two signal bar. three signal bar, four?

twistofrhyme — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 16:45:13 -0800

i live two floors above the wireless router, and my powerbook can't get a strong enough signal. what's the most cost-effective solution? i'm subletting in an old house- i'm on the third floor. the ethernet jack and router are on the ground floor, and they can't be moved-- ethernet must be plugged into an computer that apparently didn't take well to an expensive wireless card-- and i'm not comfortable asking the other tenants to change their established system and run cables all over the place for the new persson.

we have this bell sympatico router. it's in the back of the house. (specifically, it's one room away from the main stairwell, and it's sitting on a table near the doorway of that room, pointed towards the stairwell / centre of the house. given that it has to be in that room, i think it's in the optimum position). its signal has to either go through 2 floors, or follow a slightly bendy route up the stairs and through one wooden door in order to reach me.

i have a 2005 12-inch powerbook g4 (the aluminum one), which is apparently notorious for its crappy wifi antenna. in my apartment, i can get at best 2 bars of signal- not good enough. i've found a couple places in the apartment where the signal kind of works better, but even that's unreliable. previous tenant had a 2007 macbook and he didn't report any net problems, so i think my laptop is mostly at fault.

i guess my options are:
get a stronger antenna for my laptop (i don't know what kind though- suggestions?)
get a signal booster to attach directly to the wireless router, (again, don't know what kind and the guys in the bell store had no idea what i was talking about), or
get a signal repeater and place it halfway through the house, maybe in the stairwell or in my apartment? (again, what brand?)

does anyone have insight about which of these options will work best, and suggestions of where to get whatever bits i need, cheap? i'm in toronto.

thank you in advance.

Powerbook charging troubles

rtha — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 09:32:20 -0800

Help me diagnose my Powerbook’s power supply woes. I'm running 10.4.11 on a powerbook g4 (1GHz, 768 MB RAM). The trouble started yesterday when I got to work and plugged it in: the light at the site where the cord connects to the laptop doesn't light up, although the indicator in the menu bar says that it's charging. It shows a 95% charge, and that hasn't changed.

When I got home last night, I plugged it in again - I have two different powercords, both the standard Apple-supplied brick kind, one for home and one for work - and the home one does glow (green), but again, the charge doesn't increase. It isn't dropping either, at home or work.

The original battery for this powerbook keeled over in September or October, so it's got a new battery in it. I have googled, but found nothing helpful. So, help?

Help? My RAID Crashed!

drgonzo2k2 — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 20:25:55 -0800

What happened to my RAID setup today? Ok, here was my setup:

PowerMac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet) Dual 500 Mhz, 512 MB RAM
40 GB IDE HD for System HD
(4) Western Digital 250 GB SATA2 Drives
Highpoint Technologies RocketRaid 1810A PCI SATA RAID Card

I've been working on/building computers for a LONG time, so I'm pretty handy inside the case. I set this up about a month ago to use as my home media server. The 4 SATA2 drives were setup as RAID 5 using the RocketRaid controller. After parity and formatting overhead, I had about 700 GB free to use.

Absolutely no problems, running more or less 24/7 for about a month. Today I just thought I'd open up the RAID web interface from my iMac to poke around a little bit. When I logged in, it immediately told me my RAID status was "critical." When I went into array maintenance, it said that drive 2 was offline. I checked the log and didn't see any note of when it had happened.

I disconnected the system, and brought it out to have a look. I just opened it up and made sure all the connections were good. I didn't smell anything unusual. I took it back into the bedroom where it normally stays, and hooked it back up. Now it wouldn't turn back on. It would start and stop almost instantly like something was shorting out or grounded.

I brought it back out to have a look, and when I opened it up, I smelled that smell that means something bad has happened. After some trial and error, I discovered the system would not boot with drive 4 connected. I pulled it out of the case, and it definitely had the fried electronics smell. I hooked everything else back up, and it booted fine. But when I checked the RAID status it was only recognizing 1 drive. This means that 3/4 drives failed.

I verified that all of the power connections and SATA connections on the controller card were working by testing them on the remaining working drive. Everything checked out, 3 failed drives, 1 working drive, all connections fine. Only 1 of the drives had that burnt electronics smell, the other two that failed didn't have any smell at all.

My question is what could have possibly caused all of this? I know that all 4 drives were working fine less than a week ago, so at most I've been running degraded for 4-5 days. Is it really possible that all three drives failed within minutes of each other? The real kicker is that I went with this route to give me the most capacity and still have the parity for protection. I've lost a lot of data; I probably had about 80% or more backed up to disc, so it's not a total loss. I've already RMA'd the drives with Western Digital, but I'm scared to rebuild the array without knowing what caused it. I don't know if I can trust it now, and I don't want to go through this in another month or so.

Also, if you'd recommend against rebuilding the array, I'm open for suggestions for 700 GB+ storage solutions capable of streaming HD content over the network that will work well serving to primarily Macs.

rigging a used G4 as a media centre

iTristan — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 05:39:15 -0800

I am going to rebuild a used G4 as a media centre and have a few questions for anyone who might have done this My main concern is component output to analog TV. I'm unclear as to what is really necessary, and best, to make this work well. Is it just cables I need, or actually a conversion box, or perhaps a PCI video card?

prices?

Additionally:
- I plan to add a USB2.0 card for syncing with my iPod ($80?) and possibly to hook up to some Elgato device; although PVR capabilities aren't that necessary so this is optional (optional $150 - 200)
- am leaning towards a Keyspan Express as remote control; will enable Front Row on the box to make control easy for family: $60
- will get bluetooth adapter and keyboard/mouse, to surf from the sofa: $100
- will probably eventually accelerate the box with a 1.8GHz Giga card, they work pretty well: $250

So, for roughly $500 (plus output video cost) I'd have a customized entertainment box complete with large HD etc etc

Anyone have thoughts on the output, or my specs/plans?

I need to install linux on a PPC G4 Powermac at work.

govtrust — Sat, 25 Nov 2006 14:25:28 -0800

I need to install linux on a PPC G4 Powermac at work. What distro should I use? I work at a copy shop. I am looking for a linux distro which supports PDF and is easy to administer. Also we are currently using itunes for music, what would be a good replacement?

Powerbook damage repair advice needed

mr_crash_davis — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 08:03:05 -0800

Yesterday on the sidewalk in front of the office, my computer bag strap broke and the bag fell to the ground, denting the corner of my (loaner) Powerbook G4. Ouch. So now it has a munged corner on both the lcd (top right when the screen is open) and on the right-hand front corner of the body (closest to your right hand when opened), which is bad enough - but it also has a vertical white line about 3px wide going all the way up the screen from top to bottom, about 1/2" in from the right-hand side, just slightly to the right of the right-hand hinge.

Other than that, it seems to work just fine, so far. Any ideas what might have broken and what it might cost to have it repaired? What would be best for repairs, a local shop, or send it in to Apple?

Help!

Save my Powerbook G4

billysumday — Fri, 05 May 2006 16:29:52 -0800

Help me save my Powerbook G4. It keeps freezing and I have to force quit it. It will not last more than five minutes without freezing. What can I do? Is my computer dead? Is there no hope? I feel like there must be some way to defrag the computer or erase applications I'm not using or check to see which applications are causing trouble. I am obviously not much of a computer guy, so I would appreciate it if, when explaining things to me, you speak in slow sentences, as though I am retarded or a child. Thanks.

taking my g4 for a drive

zadcat — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 14:10:07 -0800

I need to add a bigger hard drive to my oldish Mac G4. This kind of machine can only see 120G of storage on a drive. The neighbourhood computer store sold me a 160G drive for pennies more than the 120G drive I wanted, because they say the 120G is no longer in stock.

The question: is the Mac going to ignore that extra 40G it can't see, or will it cause me problems?

Screwy Power Mac G4

cillit bang — Thu, 23 Feb 2006 09:41:14 -0800

I acquired a secondhand Power Mac G4 Dual 867MHz MDD a few days ago, but it's been acting a little weird. - At startup, you either get a stuttering, drawn-out startup chime and then it won't find a startup drive, or a perfect startup chime and the computer runs fine thereafter.
- Opening or closing the side door with it switched on causes the power to cut out - this shouldn't happen, right?
- The Combo drive seems to have died in the time I've had it. It at least opened and closed the first day I had it (I didn't test it any further), now it isn't even recognised, even in another computer.
- It came with a USB 2.0 PCI card installed, but until I removed it there were USB-related kernel panics at the start of most boots.

Anyone know what's wrong with this thing?

Help me charge my G4 Powerbook

unSane — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 12:40:38 -0800

The power connector to my G4 Powerbook is almost dead. It only charges in one very specific position, and I have to twist it around for a few seconds to find the sweetspot (rotating it in situ). Nothing is loose and nothing is visibly wrong. I tried squeezing the metal sleeve slightly to make it more elliptical in the hope this would create a tighter connection, but it made no difference. I *really* don't want to have to buy another power brick for what is probably a trivial issue, and I also don't want to have to pay an Apple service person $85/hr to dissect it. Any suggestions?

Buy a Powerbook now?

kirstin — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 20:28:20 -0800

I'm considering buying a Powerbook G4 15 inch, but I hesitate to do so knowing that the Macbook comes out so soon. I am worried that Macbook is untested and could be buggy, especially with heat/power/battery issues (see here and here). Is it a bad idea to buy a Powerbook G4 now? Will the price drop after the MacBook goes on the market? I'm planning to use the machine for photoshop and some low-intensity video editing. I have a monitor at home I can hook it up to, so I'm not worried about screen resolution.