PowerMac G4 obsessed with the spinning pinwheel

L

LG4

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Ok Dokey...Hola to the Mac Users out there. This is my first foray into the Mac World having been a long time PC loyalist i've finally taken the plunge and bought an old G4 seeing as theyre quite cheap nowadays thanks to the G5 being out. Regardless straight away..i've run into one hell of an issue.

Recently bought my G4 off a private seller, he showed it to me operating perfectly. so i paid the cash and took it home. When i got home, wired everything up, hit power and low and behold the first thing i get to deal with is the Grey apple screen with a grey apple in the middle accompanied by the dreaded spinning wheel which quite soon after stops spinning totally (freezes)

Now i've tried everything i can find regarding this on the net. So heres a summary of what i have tried.

>Ran fsck -fy
>Reset the PMU
>Reset the NVRAM + "reset-all"
>Reset PRAM
>Ran tests on both DDR sticks...Together, and seperately. So it was clear, ram wasn't the issue
>Ran tests on both HDD's...Together & seperately. So it was clear, HDD's weren't the issue
>Took out my GF4 card
>Disconnected any other unecessary cables which aren't being used
>Shift to get into safe mode (Non responsive)

As a last resort i also tried a pirate ver of OSX (Wasnt given OSX discs with the G4) from the net seeing as the shops were closed due to NY's EVE, so atleast the mac would be operational in some way. But alas, even that froze in the EXACT same place (even with the HDD's disconnected from the board)..Bizzare?

I may have missed 1-2 other minor approaches out (primarily commands i tried when in SU Mode), but afaik from my years of working with a PC, the only possible thing left which would house the problem is the logic board...or the cpu, right?

Im just hoping theres a DIY solution to all this rather than having to fork out more cash for a pro to take a look at it.

Appreciate ANY help i can get on this, much appreciated :)

Specs for Model M8570 (Power Mac G4 - Mirrored Drive Doors):
Dual 1.25Ghz
G4 4400
2X512 2700DDR
2x130GB HDD's (IBM ones from what i can see)
CD Drive (presumed it was DVD originally, but upon further fiddling, it's CD)
 
not to sound stupid, but it your cable from your monitor to the tower hooked up correctly? it sounds like it is, if you got to run your tests. but i have put it in upsidedown before. that's all i can think of.
 
I had something similar once, when I did not use correctly the master slave selection of the ATA bus. Try to restart with a single disk and make sure you hardware selected master correctly.
 
Hmm that sounds positive chevy..and do-able. Is there any good 3rd party place for finding OS's for Mac's..I mean, i've checked ebay & that hasnt come up with anything properly compatible when put against that chart.

The likelyhood of the seller still having the disks is slim. But messaged him regarding it anyway.

Will update if things change :)
 
Also...

It's currently hooked up to the Main Drive with the old OSX install on. I have previously tried it with the Optical Drive & Other HDD disconnected from the board, but the problem still persists :)
 
An update..Just nabbed myself a version of 0S 9.2.2's bootable disk. Due this weekend..Fingers crossed it works :) Dying to become totally mac reliant and leave the PC dependant times behind especially with Vista gaining support amongst the masses :(
 
This happened to me when I had my G4 (AGP Graphics). All I had to do was install a firmware update to get my logic board -I presume- UTD with OS X. It sounds like you have a fairly newer machine than that, but it could still be an issue. Try searching Apple.com for support on your model.
 
Qion said:
This happened to me when I had my G4 (AGP Graphics). All I had to do was install a firmware update to get my logic board -I presume- UTD with OS X. It sounds like you have a fairly newer machine than that, but it could still be an issue. Try searching Apple.com for support on your model.
Click to expand...

Possibly, but the question is how to install a firmware update on a mac which refuses to reach any kind of desktop. Unless the firmware could somehow be utilised via command in SU Mode while being on a CD. But considering the way these updates are made, i doubt thats possible :(
 
LG4 said:
Possibly, but the question is how to install a firmware update on a mac which refuses to reach any kind of desktop. Unless the firmware could somehow be utilised via command in SU Mode while being on a CD. But considering the way these updates are made, i doubt thats possible :(
Click to expand...

Actually, it is. If it is like my scenario, you could burn a disk using another computer that you would boot your G4 with. No need to even enter command line. The only peculiarity in my case was having to hold down a special reset type button on the front of the Mac.
 
Qion said:
Actually, it is. If it is like my scenario, you could burn a disk using another computer that you would boot your G4 with. No need to even enter command line. The only peculiarity in my case was having to hold down a special reset type button on the front of the Mac.
Click to expand...

Well i gave the firmware approach a crack. Burned the last G4 firmware to disk with transmac but no luck.

However, i ordered a Mac OS 9.2.2 install and that arrived today. Slotted that in and booted perfectly to the desktop area (On the CD) asking me what it wants me to do next, go for install the OS. But...Theres no drive to install on? In turn the installer fails to start once realising that. I then double checked the cables to the board/drives, all fine. Also checked if it was visible when hitting "Option" on startup. It was visible there too as an OS X HDD. But once entering OS9's environment the disk is TOTALLY invisible atleast from the number of approaches i tried in atleast being able to see it via the Installation.

Any ideas on the next step? & Yes im totally ok in wiping everything on those disks out and starting from scratch. So throw everything you got :)
 
Sounds like the drive is formatted as "extended" which would explain why the drive doesn't show up in OS 9.

What you might want to do is run OS 9's System Profiler application and find out the particulars (firmware version for instance) for the machine you purchased.
If you don't mind starting from scratch, you could reformat the internal hard drive under OS 9, then install OS 9 on it. From there you can make decisions about how you want to progress. Sort of a pain, but it should give you at least a place to start.

Once you know the particulars, I think it would be well worth the dough to get, at least Panther (10.3), or better yet, Tiger (10.4) software from a reputable dealer.
I'm pretty sure that the Pather installer discs has the firmware updates required for that OS version install on older machines.

Panther was a pretty solid OS when updated all the way to 10.3.9.

I hope that having purchased a used machine without reasonably current OS install discs will not become an insurmountable obstacle for you.
 
Any way to format the HDD via commandline? Like DOS on windows...The reason i ask is because i've given the booting up via OS9 a good crack, but all attempts ive made have failed :(

OS9 still fails to see any of the internal drives currently. I also took the step of attempting to use my 20gb Ipod as the go between to get it running. Used windows + Transmac to make it into a HFS system + loaded it with diskwarrior. However, when hooking it up to the G4, it knew it was there according to the System Profiler, but it allowed me no way to access it. I went to all the Drive Utils on the CD. But the only accessible drive was ofcourse the CD Drive, if i can just get it to let me access the ipod, my gut feeling is i'd be ok and can finally make some real progress.

Thoughts?
 
BTW Flying Meat, Mac OS Extended has been supported since Mac OS 8.1. It's possible that Mac OS Extended with Journaling Enabled was used and that might not be readable in operating systems older than OS X.
 
I hate to do this rather shameless & selfish act of bumping this thread up..But any ideas on this?
 
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