New Mac user having some weird problems.

F

FinalJnemba

Registered
Hi all, im a looooong time windows user that just picked up a new (to me) G4. Iv used macs before, but never owned one. Some info about the computer, its a Power Mac G4 AGP Graphics with a Rev 1 Sawtooth motherboard. I got it cheap without a hardrive or memory, I put in a 30gig maxtor and 320mb of ram. Other than that everything is original. It seems to be in great shape and besides the issues im having, it runs great.

Now, onto my problem. I bought a retail copy of OS 10.2 since I had no OS to put on it. The CD's seem fine with no scratches and it installs flawlessly. But once I actualy start using the computer it almost seems as if part of the operating system is corrupt. There are odd scan lines through some of my icons, the trash and OSX icon for example. Also the loading screen when I first boot has them as well. The sound dosent work right, its all garbled and it seems like some of the system sounds are missing. And the OS just seems generaly unstable, for exaple, if I try to watch a DVD, the second I hit play the program will crash. Iv also had some random crashes as well. But OTOH I can surf using sefari fine, and email seems to work as well.

I just seems like an odd collection of problems that if I was diagnosing on a windows box I would say was a corrupt operating system. But its a freshly formated drive with a fresh installation of OS 10.2.

Thing iv already tried :

I reinstalled the OS, same exact issues.
I verified and repaired my permissions, per the FAQ, same issues.
I also tried to search the forum, but found no similar issues.

Any body have any ideas? Any help would be greatly apreciated!

Thanks for listening,
Benson
 
Are there any PCI cards installed? remove any that you have.
Reseat the video card in its AGP slot.
Reseat the memory, or move to different slots.
Try reseating the processor in its socket.

If no help, you may have a flaky video card, or one of your memory chips is not quite happy in your Mac.
 
Nope, just tried all those things, none helped. I also just re-installed the os a third time using a different dvd rom drive, with no improvment. Do you think there is any way the OSX cd could be messed up? It just seems weird that its alwase the same icons and programs that are screwed up, even on my third install. I would think that if it was the ram or graphics card the problems would be a little more random no?

Thanks,
Benson
 
What diagnostic software would you guys recomend? I dont want to start buying parts untill I know wich one is broken. I know with windows there are programs that can stress test your hardware for errors, do any programs like this exist for the mac?
 
Update : Ok now im really confused. On the tird time I installed OSX I did not do the automatic updates, and its running better without them. The icons are still messed up, but it playes dvd's now, the sound works, and it is yet to crash on me. Dosent this mean that it has to be some kind of software issue?

Thanks for all the help so far guys,
Benson
 
I would get a copy of Tiger 10.4 and another 128MB of RAM. Install that and see what happens. As for a diagnostic software I would try and see if you know anyone with a Power Mac G4 diagnostic CD. These were made for techs and shipped to them for diagnostic software. I have one I can lend you as long as I get it back. I would also try and see if you are able to get a PCI graphics card and see if the video straightens out.
 
Roto31 said:
I would get a copy of Tiger 10.4 and another 128MB of RAM. Install that and see what happens. As for a diagnostic software I would try and see if you know anyone with a Power Mac G4 diagnostic CD. These were made for techs and shipped to them for diagnostic software. I have one I can lend you as long as I get it back. I would also try and see if you are able to get a PCI graphics card and see if the video straightens out.
Click to expand...

Thats actualy just what I was thinking, although id hate to spend the money just the have the problems return. Im gonna give tech tools pro a try first and see what I come up with. If I cant find any hardware errors, ill probably go that route.

PS. It seems that its when I upgrade from 10.2 to 10.2.8 that things really go heywire, I wonder why that is?
 
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