[SOLVED] found powermac G4 need help please

[heatherval]

Hi

Recently my boyfriend has found a Powermac G4
it looks like the Blue and white Model also has the 128 rage card inside
i think hard drive is missing on the bottom,as i had seen a plate just sitting there,But we have plenty of parts here,such as IDE drives and a few Sata drives,possibly ATA i dont know and dont knwo if i can use an IDE drive or not.

We plugged it in at first and no chime till we put in a pc100 chip i believe it was PC100 dont quote me on that yet but the chip did work.

We only have a window Usb keyboard so none of the short cut keys seem to make sense to us and can not get into bios even holding down C
We see is that NO OS available folder with the question mark on a grey screen

i also held down windows key and alt and c and f and got to a screen with an arrow and a refresh icon or back icon and they did nothing.
all i seen was a little timer clock and then it stopped loading.

We are only familar with BSD Solars Ubuntu Dos and Windows
we never used a Mac before and would lveo any encouragement to
get this thing working with an OS and to get to bios screen
i would love to ry something new here at home.

i tested the battery and it looked like it is really low and will need a replacement sometime soon.but in the meantime i really would like to get to
some kind of set up screen using a standard USB keyboard not a mac keyboard so i dont know the shortcut keys at all.

Also what OS do you people use mostly Panther tiger Ubuntu?
Thanks so much for your help if you can help me as i am very excited about having a new toy and do wanna see this thing do something soon

Thank You all

 

[karazelle]

Re: found powermac G4 need help please

Macs don't have BIOS in the sense you know from PC. They have something called OpenFirmware used on PowerPC systems. This is not something you really want to be messing with. The Mac relies on system settings being set in software for the most part.

Before you even begin to fool around wit that, I think I have an idea what your problem is though. The Mac works on a simple aspect of looking at all disks for a "blessed" system folder (bootable volume containing the files it needs to boot and a special flag teling it it can boot from there).

By installing a harddrive (always as Cable Select, and I believe those old macs use regular ATA 100 or lower disks), you also need to install MacOS X (or worst case, MacOS 9) on the Mac for it to be able to boot or to access the drive contents. You need a copy of MacOS (X), and boot the computer using it. Then you should be able to install MacOS onto a partition on the disk.

If you cannot or don't want to use MacOS, you can also use PowerPC Linux, but you might have to burn it on another computer in your home.

The shortcut keys you want to know for use when booting, are:
Option (alt) = present a boot menu of all bootable disks the Mac sees
c = boot from CD/DVD directly
holding down left mouse button = eject any CD/DVD the Mac refused to reject within the OS.
T - Firewire target mode, explained in my blog, which link is in my signature.

In general in MacOS:
Cmd (the key with the apple logo and sightseeing sight symbol, also known as cloverleaf) is the general shortcut key in MacOS. On Windows, its often mapped to the Windows key.
Cmd + C, Cmd + X, Cmd + V = Copy, Cut, Paste respectively.
Cmd + Q = Quit active application
Cmd + W = Close current window in application
Cmd+Tab = Alt+Tab in Windows world, app switching

Many more in the help system.

 

[karazelle]

Re: found powermac G4 need help please

To see an install screen you need an OS install disk.
The latest release of MacOS X is Leopard (10.5). Probably the most used MacOS X releases are Leopard (10.5) and Tiger (10.4). Panther is also popular (10.3), but a bit old now.

Be aware that Mac users upgrade FREQUENTLY to the latest version if possible. Unlike on Windows where people might be running Windows 2000 to Vista in the current time frame, the vast majority of Mac users will be quick to upgrade and a big part of that is that usually, the newest Mac release will work fine on fairly older Mac models. My SO has a Mac mini G4 with 1GB RAM and runs Leopard well, although has been considering going back to Tiger on it (to replace it with an iMac with Leopard quite soon)

You can use a Windows keyboard and mouse on your Mac. The keys won't match entirely (there's some help for this in MacOS X Tiger), but it will work.
Keep in mind what I mentioned above re: most used keystrokes and how they map to PC keyboards.
Also be aware of PowerPC Linux versions might/will likely refer to Mac keyboard keys.
You can pick up a Mac keyboard fairly cheap, and close to the newest released Mac keyboard work on fairly old Macs. The totally new aluminium keyboards won't work, but you should be able to pick up the generation of Apple keyboards immideately before it. I also think Logitech have some keyboards with Mac symbols on.

 

[heatherval]

Re: found powermac G4 need help please

hi

Thanks for your help
i have OS 9 right now i have a cdrw disk the machine was able to read

Now all i have to do is dig up a hard drive from one of my shelves here
i have So many of them about 25 of them maybe more a few are IDE, Sata,and,ATA but
i think the ATA are only a gig unfortunatly
i will have to look at them and try them.

i hope this machine will work with OS 10 Tiger?
See link below on my machines specs


from what i read here and please excuse the link
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/stats/powermac_g4_400.html

The specs on the machine says This Power Macintosh G4 model is capable of booting MacOS 9 and using MacOS 9 applications within the MacOS X "Classic" environment.
Please note that this system cannot run versions of MacOS X more recent than 10.4.11.

Also i did mention the battery is just about dead.

I will close this post soon as i hear form you

Sounds like you know your Stuff

Thank You

 

[karazelle]

Re: found powermac G4 need help please

That means you can install either MacOS X 10.3 Panther or MacOS X 10.4 Tiger. If possible, Tiger is the most modern, but depends on how much RAM you can get for it (it supports <= 1Gb, however the chips need not be paired).

MacOS X 10.3 is probably the ideal bet for what OS you could run to balance the speed and the modern-ness. 10.4 is likely to be slow. Also, you want at least 512MB RAM for OS X AND apps to compensate for the CPU speed on that, and it maxes at 1GB.
MacOS X 10.3 was the last OS X to be released on CD-ROM if I recall correctly. That machine came with a CD-ROM. You can use firewire target mode (explained in my blog, link in signature) to install OS X 10.4 from DVD in another Mac that has a DVD drive, and that Mac can be an Intel Mac.

MacOS 9 will give the highest speed, but at the expense of preemptive multitasking. OS 9 had true multitasking but it was cooperative. Also, you can hardly find any OS 9 applications anymore.

To see what your machine has, use the Apple menus option to see more "About this machine". How much RAM has it? If it has lower than 128, or just 128, then OS X will be impossible/difficult. 256+ is better, 512MB ideal, up to 1GB luxury (or waste).

Note that using such an old Mac gives you valid ideas of the operating system itself and interacting with applications, but in no way should you draw speed or performance conclusions from this.
Todays Macs are leagues faster and more responsive than that computer.

 

[heatherval]

Re: found powermac G4 need help please

HI

Thanks again

i had tried all of my hard drives and each time i went to the install screen
it told me no valid drives were found on my system.

OK i spoke too soon i finally was able to get a working hard drive.
i did not know i had to erase format the drive now i did and it is installing now Mac OSX 9

After that i guess we take it from there and yes i have way over 512 of Ram in there.

Too bad i do not have any Blank DVDs as i only have Blank DVDRW and CDRW
and i do not think i can fit tiger on a CDRW Disk.


Thank You

 

[karazelle]

Re: found powermac G4 need help please

Yes, Cable Select is the switches for Master/Slave etc.

First, you need to use the Disk Utility to see the disk and Initialise/Erase (partition) it, then it should appear for the installer

On OS X, in the installer, using Disk Utility to set up the disk and then the installer to install it. Same procedure in OS 9, but the disk tool is in a folder on the install disk somewhere. My memory fails me on the procedure exactly in OS 9.

 

[heatherval]

Re: found powermac G4 need help please

Hi

Thanks a bunch
i got panther on here now
who knows if i may go Tiger later on.

i notice this has a terminal in it like BSD Does
is this Unix or linux based at all?

Thank You once again for all your help
ill go ahead and close the topic now