I bought a powerbook g4 with no hard drive and no memory i replaced them both. And now when i turn it on i get a solid blue screen and a red circle with a slash through it in the center.I am new to apple computers so can anyone tell me what i can do to resolve this issue.?My g4 is a 1.3 ghz 15 inch ?
PowerBook
It should be a gray circle and slash on a gray background. A little like a no entry sign. Because you mention a red circle on blue background this might indicate a GPU or Display hardware problem?
When you replaced the hard drive did you insert one with a pre-installed operating system? If yes what version? If not how did you install the operating system and what version?
There are a number of possible reasons why you might see the no entry sign.
The operating system installation went bad for some reason and/or the drive you installed it on developed a problem almost immediately after the install. You're trying to boot older hardware using a newer operating system. The only way this could happen is if you installed the operating system on a disk connected to a later model mac and subsequently transferred the drive to the Powerbook.
There's also a remote possibility you're trying boot newer hardware using an older operating system.
The maximum OS you can install on that hardware is 10.5 (Leopard). If you don't have the installer disk you will need to find and purchase a universal DVD installer unless you can locate the gray coloured machine specific DVD Installer for it? eBay possibly? You don't mention how much RAM you have? For Leopard you will need 1GB as a minimum. The maximum RAM that hardware supports is 2GB.
Supported RAM Modules are the PC2700 DDR333 200-pin SO-DIMM type.
i thought the circle was red my friend said it was blueish grey on lighter background. the hard drive i took out of a working ibm laptop i have 1 gig of memory the spec page said the computer came with panther so i bought a three disk set off ebay
Minium version of Panther that hardware spec supports is 10.3.7. Unless you managed to buy the machine specific version of the Panther installer disks - the gray coloured ones - you may end up with what you're seeing. If you can't get the specific machine version of the disks you should aim for the universal installer for Panther.
Sorry for so long to reply,thank you for your patience and help The panther disks i purchased from ebay were supposed to be for this machine,they are 3 black disks with a big white x across the entire disk and they have MAC OS X Panther Version 10.3 Install Disc 1 Install Disc 2 Install Disc 3. They have the APPLE logo on them and look like the real stuff.That being said i do not know much o f anything about APPLE Macintosh and am trying to learn to help my grand daughter so i might should have asked these questions before i purchased.I still dont have a lot invested and want to try to get it going,i have never heard of a universal installer is it compatible with these discs? or what else should i do if i need new discs what are the newest i can run and how much more ram would they require.?thanks for all your knowledge and help.dave?
A universal installer disks for older versions of Mac OS X were coloured black. Universal installers could be used to install on hardware that supported the version of that installer which had to match. There's nothing wrong with the disks you bought off eBay per se but if they say version 10.3 and nothing else yet the minimum OS that originally came with the hardware you have was 10.3.3 the two don't really match up do they? In which case this mis-match more than likely explains your problem. The situation today has changed from what it was previously as all macs used to come with gray coloured hardware model specific installer disks (CDs or DVDs). I would look on eBay for Panther 10.3.4 or better still the 10.4 (Tiger) installer DVD or even the Tiger set of 4 CDs as any of these should work with your hardware.
I found these which might be better for you?
This one:
includes iWork and may help you and your grand-daughter more?
Whatever you decide don't under any circumstances buy any gray-coloured disks unless they specifically state they are for your hardware model as these won't install properly if at all.
my powerbook wont start
