From Scratch

[ooKmonkey]

Hi Im a lot of a newbie here when it comes to macs so please be gentle

Right My lovely other half (just incase she reads this) was given a powermac G4 from her work as they were moving to pc's and were just planning on binning the macs.

now she was given a mac os 9.1 disc and was basically told she could have the machine as long as she got rid of everything on it (I think so it didn't have any of the paid for software on it) Not really a problem buying the software as shes got a free computer .

Now I come from a PC background so im a bit cluesless here (please feel free to insultme here ) but i just presumed we would be able to re-install the OS over whats on and this would remove any of her companies software/files. Now ive tried holding the 'c' button when I turned it on and it looks like its going to do something before it goes straight into the normal desktop Am I doing something wrong or is this just not possible? All im wanting to do is format it and start again?

Thanks for any wisdom your willing to part onto these Mac noob shoulders

 

[rpphoto]

Hi, try starting with the option key instead. If that doesn't work, find the preference panel for start-up disc and select the disc while it's inserted. If it's a g-4, you should be able to run Tiger, which is a much much nicer system and much more is being developed for it now...
Since we moving toward Leopard, Tiger is cheaper at some places right now. Once you have Tiger install, you can update whatever build you receive to the very newest through the Apple menu...

 

[ooKmonkey]

Hi

Thanks for the info ill give it a try.

out of curiosity, Ive just noticed that it has 9.2 on it but they gave us a 9.1 disc. Could this be caused by the fact that its an older OS than whats on?

 

[Ric]

Hi there and welcome,

your presumptions were all correct holding down thw c key and rebooting should have worked. How long did you hold it down for ? Is the disk scratched ? Dirty ?

Try selecting it as the Startup disk as 'rpphoto' suggests and let us know how you get on !

regards

Ric

 

[ooKmonkey]

Hi

ok this is strange. I have tried holding the c button down (held it from pressing the power on untill the machine was fiully booted) and it just booted into 9.2 instead of botting from the cd.

so I followed rpphoto tip and went to the control panel and set it to use the cd as the startup disc and when it rebooted it did seem different, it had a folder type icon showing for about 10 seconds but then it just booted as normal into 9.2

there must be something stupid that im missing cos im sure this should be fairly easy

 

[ooKmonkey]

Hi, Im still having no joy with this

Is there any way to format the hard drive and then start again

 

[Ric]

Hi there,

what does the 9.1 disk say on it, some of them will only boot specific Mac's.

You need a bootable disk to be able to do this. Have you tried any other disks in the drive ? Is the drive working ok ?

regards

Ric

 

[ooKmonkey]

Hi

Sorry for the slow reply (didn't get the usual email letting e know there was a response), ill check the disk when I get home and see if it says anything specific. as an idea.

would it work If i put the hard drive into my windows machine, formatted it and then put it back and trie the install? My brother suggested this but he has about as much mac experience as me so I thought id run it by you guys.

better to be safe then to have an pretty door stop

 

[bluekatt]

what kind of powermac G4 were you given ?
some refuse to boot off a 9.1 disc and absolutley want to have 9.2.2
while other mac os discs are tailored to boot only on the mac they were bundeld with
like say an imac