Conundrum: Mac won't boot to HD, Safe Mode, Verbose, OR to Install CD

dave17lax

Inventor of the Egg Wave
Has anyone ever had a mac not be able to boot from the install CD? I remember having this problem back on my Powercomputing machine, but that was once they folded and driver support started to go away.

I've got a G4 Gigabit Dual 500 tower that will not start up. Symptoms:

Computer "dings" like normal.
Computer starts up to a gray screen with no apple logo.
Computer goes from gray screen to blank blue screen with no apple logo.
Computer goes from blue screen to "mac desktop" screen, but there's no login window, logos, mouse, menus, etc.

What I've tried:

Starting from Install CD (CD spins up but the computer simply goes to a blank blue screen)
Starting in verbose (no dice)
Starting in Safe Mode (no dice)
Zappin PRAM (no dice)
PMU Reset (tried because I was really frustrated)
Gutted Hard Drives, backuped, created disk images, restored disk image to new Hard Drive (no dice)

Any clues? I am stumped and just wish I could at least boot from the OSX Install Disk.

Thank you.

PS- this is a 3rd party Pioneer drive (oem superdrive), this is not the drive that came with the mac. But I'm sure I've been able to boot from it before.
 
apple keyboard but non-apple mouse. also i am using a different graphics card. I've had this setup for awhile and it's been fine, but I'll try to get the original stuff back in. Thanks.
 
It almost sounds like the graphics card is only showing a corner of the screen, or showing you a second monitor view, so it could be that. Otherwise, it could be the logic board.
 
Keep your women and children away from my troubleshooting skills. It was the graphics card; I had stupidly plugged the monitor into my 2nd graphics card which is headless for the moment. Oh well at least i got a new hard drive out of this. Now to get an IDE adapter so the g4 can actually use the 200 gig drive I bought. [Actually I think it's time to get a cheap mini]
Thanks eric-
 
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