Yup, sounds like a hard drive issue. I agree with John on this one— if you can get it connected to another Mac via Firewire, then check out the disk with a utility, that ought to at least confirm whether or not you've got a faulty HD.
Also, if you have (or can get your hands on very cheaply) a Leopard install DVD, that should get you to Disk Utility as well, provided your optical drive is working OK. If push comes to shove, you might just want to consider giving up the G4 and upgrading to a MacBook Pro. Or, if graphics ability, web videos, and Leopard aren't that important, you could downgrade to a PowerBook G3 Pismo. Other than rare logic board issues (cheaply fixed, easy DIY) and dead PRAM batteries (don't have to spend any $$ on this one—just unplug it from the board), the ol' Pismo just keeps going and going and going and going and… :-) Plus, it gets well over 10 hours of battery life with dual 6600 mAH batteries—up to 16 hours with dual 7200 mAH batts—and it works with Office '08 (make sure you have over 512 MB RAM). Just a suggestion. If it ends up being a failed hard drive (again), I can vouch for the Hitachi HTS541612J9AT00—my hard drive. It's a 120 GB 5400 rpm ATA drive, not exactly silent as the grave, but exponentially quieter than most other hard drives its age (Jan '08). In the 1.5 years I've had it (got it in Aug '08), it's never given me any problems (when my laptop was failing—turns out its CPU was creeping out of its sockets, an easy fix—I was trying to find a host body for this HD and had settled on an old PC desktop in need of some love. Of course, then I re-seated the CPU, so I didn't have to do that). Whatever you do, DON'T get an 80 GB Toshiba 5400 rpm… those things are evil! Good luck, FFF On Mar 24, 6:00 pm, Sasuke Uchiha <[email protected]> wrote: > Hello, thanks for replying and sorry for not being so clear: > > My model is as follows > > PowerBook G4 Alu 15" 1GHZ PPC > 1GB RAM > Firewire > USB > DVI > S-Video > > F***ed Battery > > I am not sure on the exact model number, and i don't really wish to > take the pig apart AGAIN. But i can tell you that i replaced it's > failing measley 60GB hitatchi HDD with a nice new ATA(since that's the > only ones they take)160GB hitatchi HDD. > > Note that the original hard drive was listed as failing under the > S.M.A.R.T. status in disk utility before i replaced it. i later opened > it up to find a nice clean scratch on the top disk. > > I am running Mac OS X 10.5.8 leopard. > > Also, to be more clear on the startup thing.. > > When it boots, you press powr button, startup chime...HDD spins up. 7 > seconds wait as it is with all ppc's. then the screen powers on to the > grey beckground, and you would usually see the apple logo appear, then > the spinning loader, but it sticks to the grey screen and refuses to > budge. So, you have to either force shut down or restart it. so i > restarted it while holding down to get into the bootable partitions > list, but it will load and finish loading and nothing will appear. > Also, if you want to try firewire, you hold down the T key on powerup > etc, but now you have to wait about 2 minutes before the screen starts > up and you get the blue bg with the firewire symbol. > > I have worked with macs my entire life and have now had to resort to a > pc for main use as my life revolves around a big meaty intel processor > extending past 4GHZ. but i keep my machine to take with me whenever i > leave home, and it has been very useful. > > If it would help anyone, i would be happy to upload pictures of it > booting and the bootable partitions screen etc, just let me know. > > Thank you all in advance if anyone manages to finish reading this > without getting bored to death, as i really am in trouble now and i > have no idea on what to do. > > -Sasuke (Alex) -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Books, a group for those using G3 iBooks and PowerBooks (we run a separate list for G4 'Books). The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-books.html and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To leave this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g-books Support for older Macs: http://lowendmac.com/services/ To unsubscribe from this group, send email to g-books+unsubscribegooglegroups.com or reply to this email with the words "REMOVE ME" as the subject.
