On Mon, 2011-04-25 at 14:23 -0700, Dan Ziegler wrote: > Hi there, > I have recently bought an iMac G4 (iLamp) off craigslist-it's the > original 17" model (800 MHz, SDRAM, 80 GB). When I bought it the girl ..
> stuck a old 60 GB hard drive in and installed OS X 10.4 and now it > works fine. > I have a15 inch iLamp, if you call them that. I get similar errors in the hard disk. I started to replace it, but was intimidated by the process. Is the 17 in iLamp easier to replace a hard drive on? I love the appearance if these G4 iMacs and would like to get this back into operation. > But I was wondering why the old drive "failed". It wouldn't even start > up off the OS X DVD to do a disk check! I took the original "failed" > hard drive and stuck it in my Linux box, and ran Disk Utility (the > Gnome app, it's similar to Apple's). Disk checking on "Macintosh HD" > turned up clean, but the S.M.A.R.T. Status field said, "Drive has a > few bad sectors." On scanning THAT, it told me the drive is about to > fail. But I can use all of the files on Linux fine, such as the System > folder, Users and such. I don't know if the S.M.A.R.T field will cause > OS X to crash or what. > From what I can read, SMART is not all that smart. Particularly, SMART often fails to notice that drives are failing But, when it tells you a drive is failing, then it probably is. I am guessing the firmware in the iMac queries SMART, but I don't know. If there is anything interesting on that drive, I suggest you copy it off soon. Linux will report SMART data, but normally lets you decide whether to proceed or not. OSX is more of a hand holding type of OS, so I would not be at all surprised if OSX just acted on SMART data. > Also the screen has a number of small scratches in the upper left > corner. When a light color is displayed underneath them, the screen > looks dirty. But the pixels themselves are bright and all work. So I > was wondering, is it possible to buy a screen "top mat" or whatever > you call it to replace the scratched one? Or remove the scratches. > I think that front is glass. Apple says to use only a damp, lint free cloth. There is a light tint to the screen and polishing it would remove it on that spot. That would be no good. At least, that is what I read. Maybe you should look for a nice 17 inch screen with a dead motherboard and do a transplant. Good luck, Ralph -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
