G4 tower wont get past smiling Mac

[mcbridedesign]

Hi,

First time on a forum so please excuse all my deficiencies.

I have a Mac G4 tower. On a start up it doesn't get past the smiling mac icon. I have tried:
Safe start
Ram purger
Complete re installs of os9 and then osx, now back to os9.
Removing and putting back the Ram modules.

I can launch the mac and run from a system CD. I have run and fixed all issues using disk utilities but it still won't start up. Never had problems like this before. It's about 6 years old.

Any suggestions would be very welcome.

D

 

[DICKSTER]

D---- I Don't Know But Try Zap The Pram On Start Up For 3 Chimes Times.
Press Comm-opt-p-r Keys And Hold Til You Have Heard The Chimes 3 Separate Times. Then Release And See If It Will Reboot.-it's Worth A Try.
Dickster----------------------------------------------------

 

[mcbridedesign]

Thanks for the reply, unfortunately have tried that a couple of times bust stil no joy,

D

 

[nixgeek]

Check the following site to see if your Power Macintosh G4 needs a firmware update.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86117

You MUST have OS 9 installed in order to perform the firmware upgrade. Follow the instructions supplied by the firmware package for your Mac.

 

[mcbridedesign]

Hi Thanks for the info, only problem is how do I upgrade the firmware when all I can do is run the mac from CD?

 

[nixgeek]

If you've installed Mac OS 9 on it (that's what I gathered from your original post), just boot to that and install the appropriate firmware. Mac OS 9 should have installed some sort of browser, albeit an old one (probably IE 5.1.x or Netscape 4.x), but you can still browse to this page and follow the link provided.

 

[violincredible]

Do you have a spare hard disk, firewire HD or even an iPod to try booting from?
The fact that it won't boot from the internal HD, but will from CD points toward a disk
(or disk controller) issue maybe?
HDs are so cheap now, it's worth grabbing another one anyway

Good luck!