Help, I've done something daft with an old G4 mac - deleted the lot, no start up

[zoiks]

Hello there,

I'm hoping one of you experts can help, I've really screwed up. So, a buddy of mine was slinging out an old G5 (family is now all on macbooks, iPads etc and the G4 belonged to somebody who passed away so they just wanted to get rid of it) so far so good. I took it home, with the intention of wiping the HD and starting afresh with an old, but kinda brand new mac. I went to disc utility but all the options were greyed out so I could not actually do anything. So, being the impatient type, I did some googling and ended up trying the old 'rm -rf /' . Not smart, I know. It will no longer start up (gets stuck on the apple screen) and makes a loud beep when I switch it on. I'm really hoping you guys can help me with this one. Do I need to buy an old install disc (not sure which version). Oh no.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

You mention both a G5 & a G4 but this I'm presuming you mean a G4?

Just the one beep refers to having failed the hardware startup tests because of their being no RAM installed or detected at startup. Does the LED flash at all after you hear the beep?

Do you have the original Software Install Discs that came with the G4?

You could try resetting the PRAM as per this link.