powerbook g4 partition map

[Themayhem]

i recently bought a used (non-working) powerbook g4 and it seems to be in okay condition, but when i try to install osx it wont show a drive to install on and when i use the erase tab in the disk utility it sits at "setting up partition map" for a while, how long should the partition map take to finish and how would i go about fixing this problem? (if there is one)


thanks in advance guys.

 

[Themayhem]

also i tried booting ubuntu and it gives me a gnome error and i reset the PRAM so it's telling me the clock is wrong (which obviously it is, cause i reset the pram)

anyways, i get two errors and when i close them it just sits there.

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

when i try to install osx it wont show a drive to install on.

When using Disc Utility (on Install Media) does your Macs HD show up in the left column?

 

[KiP78]

Hi,

May or may not be useful to you. I had a similar issue with a G4 power book which I inherrited as it would no longer boot.

I tried installing Linux on it and it got so far then crashed with a drive error. The drive showed up in the prep when installing OSX but kept erroring if I tried to do anything to it...

I got myself a torque driver that fits the screws on the G4 - one for all I might add.

Opened the case and the connector for the hard drive had become loose. It is just a flexible copper connector and the tape holding it in place had list its stickyness and the connection to the drive was "hanging on by a thread" hence the drive was visible but data was being lost with the poor connection.

Reconnected and it and put the case together... happy days - all working!

I went here to get details on how to crack open the mac book - apologies if this is old news:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/powerbookG4_12in_HD_upgrade/PowebookG4_12in_HD_upgrade.htm

Was quite a painful experience but not so traumatic that it couldn't be done.

If there are no better suggestions I would certainly recommend cracking the book open and checking the connections

Hope this helps.

Cheers
Chris

 

[Themayhem]

When using Disc Utility (on Install Media) does your Macs HD show up in the left column?

it does show the drive, as for checking connections that was definitely one of the things i considered (but thanks for suggesting it, it's definitely something alot of people would skip over and just assume that the drive is bad or something of the sort)

i was able to get ubuntu to load gnome, originally it'd give me an error and say gnome wasn't going to load and tell me the time/date is wrong (cause i reset the pram)

so i

1) booted into finnux and reset the date using "date -s 'wed sept 3 10:00:20 2008"
2) did "poweroff -n"
3)rebooted with ubuntu

which got me into gnome from the live cd however i couldn't format and install, it would try to install at a certain partition on the drive (instead of starting at 0 it would start at 3) and would give me an error about how it couldn't write to it.

 

[Themayhem]

update:


when i'd try booting the hardware test it'd freeze before it even loaded

so i figured i'd try pulling the hard drive out, and voila, the hardware test would boot, and the test said everything passed (on the extended test)

is it possible to hook up an external (usb) hard drive to it and install osx to the external and boot it without a hard drive in the laptop?

 

[KiP78]

AFAIK I don't think the powerbook supports USB boot from any device. However I am not a real mac user so best not quote me on this but I did try a few things like that. I very accidentally found this site and this was the first thread I saw so thought I would share two cents with you.

Have you tried putting the drive in a usb caddy and connecting it to another computer. Perhaps a Windows box and formatting it, then try a chkdsk /r to see if there are any bad sectors; or even Linux box and formatting - not too familiar with Linux but am sure the nix guys have a rudimentary disk checking utility of sorts ;o)

If it's definitely not the cable / connection then from what you said about the install trying to start from Partition 3 I would say it's a disk fault of some kind, as it can't read the drive correctly.

Hope you get it working though, my sister loves the G4 for surfing facebook and the like. It's not up to much more without a memory boost tbh - maybe at Chrimbo eh!

Cheers,
Chris

 

[KiP78]

ps, very doubtful - can't remember what the drive is, but it's not a jumper setting is it?

 

[Themayhem]

thanks for the input, i did some googling and found some things about booting from a usb drive but it was just way too much work to deal with, i just ordered a new internal drive so hopefully it works. *crosses fingers*

i tried a spare drive that i had lying around (that i also found to be dead) ofcourse someone gave it to me and they didn't even know if it worked or not so it could or could not be bad, hopefully this fresh internal works.

 

[KiP78]

Good luck!

 

[Themayhem]

so i ordered a new HD and put it in and it erased it, and then i tried to partition it and the partitioner just sat there, so i powered off and now it wont even erase the drive, what am i doing wrong?