Q: Just bought a new (unbroken factory seals still in place) G4 15in 867 at an estate sale. No disk included will recognise the HD. Most disk options are greyed out. Your expertise would be greatly appreciated.
An elderly client of mine just bought a brand new (still sporting the orginal unbroken factory seals ), G4 867 15 in. at a local estate sale. Looking at it zaps me back to watching "Old School" when it first hit, or speaking of watching; back in the day when if a Britany video came on - who cared if someone forgot to hit the unmute button long as I never went blind. lol.
I have tried several things to get HD recognised - all to no avail. She tried to "set it up" herself and being old and forgetful, was unable to explain just what she did or didn't to bring it to the state it's in. None of the several disks included have helped as most options are greyed out. I have run them all - A G4 install/restore disk, a hardware test disk - which comes back a 100% perfect, a Mac OS X Xcode tools disk and (3) Mac OS X Panther disks.
If anyone can help me tonight it would be greatly appreciated. I know people close to her are anxious to see her enjoy this as a Christmas present. So it be like doing a good deed for the darlin' at Christmas time. Go figure.
Thank you in advance, RJA
PowerBook
Posted on Dec 23, 2011 9:42 PM
When you boot it holding the alt/option key, does the hard drive show up as an option to boot from? I'm guessing not.
When you ran the Apple hardware test, did it show any errors, specifically anything that might be associated with the hard drive? Did you run the extended test?
If the drive is in fact dead, and there are no other hardware issues, you'll need a 2.5" parallel ATA hard drive to replace it. A serial ATA (SATA) drive won't work.
If your clients intent is to use the Powerbook on the internet, you'll want to upgrade to the last OS X release that will run on Powerbooks, which is OS X Leopard 10.5. Apple no longer sells it. http://www.hardcoremac.com is one source in the US for unopened Apple software. That may require increasing memory too.
However, even with an update to OS X 10.5, some plugs in, like Adobe Flash, only support what is now an older one for PowerPC. Some web sites now require Intel-based systems to access, and streaming video, even on the last, faster PowerBooks, is getting more and more difficult to view as time goes on. To do things like email online is fine, however, much more than that can be frustrating.
Posted on Dec 25, 2011 8:06 AM