G4 Won't start. Won't boot from any disc (OS 9 or Linux).

I recently acquired a Power Mac G4 from my school, as they did not need it. The computer was a donation to the school, so the hard drive was removed and destroyed.
I found a hard drive for it, and hooked it in and it seems to be running fine. However no matter what I do, it will not boot from the disc drive. I have tried holding "C" while it's booting, and the screen goes white for a little while,and then it switches to the flashing Finder icon and question mark. I have also tried the Startup Manager, but it doesn't show that there are any discs whatsoever. I looked around and found that the Open Firemware may help. But I can't get into it using the CommandShift+OF command. In fact, the only time i got into it, was when I mashed a bunch of keys at once, and it came up. But that hasn't worked again.
Also (I dont know if this matters) but when I press the Power button, I don't hear that ever so wonderful, startup sound. And Ive tried to boot from the internal disc drive, and an external Sony drive.

The Mirrored Drive Doors G4 models (and possibly the quicksilver 2002 models) are unable to boot OS 9 from ANY "Full Retail" CD. These Macs came out after the last versions of "Full Retail" 9.2.1 were issued, and if you bought one of these advanced G4s new, it came with a set of discs that contained a customized 9.2.1, so no new "Full Retail" OS 9 CDs were needed.
If you could post the CPU speed (check the label on the back), readers can figure out exactly which Mac you have and determine how much trouble you are in.
Can you get a Mac OS X 10.2 or 10.3 "Full Retail" CD from the school? They should have trunks full, and think of them as antiques.
Message was edited by: Grant Bennet-Alder

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Hi, yoshi -
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Article #HT1310 - Startup Manager: How to Select a Startup Volume
A feature not discussed in that article -
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Clone should be a must and easy to do and learn (learn by doing! 2)
6800 would 'qualify' as 5x70 series flashed etc and same rule: 10.6.5
In the past there was 10.4.6, 10.5.6, but not 10.6.6 - even though strong need for such a DVD.
10.6.8 DVD would be excellent
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http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner
http://www.bombich.com/software/updates/ccc-3.5.html
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http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone-backup.html
http://macperformanceguide.com/Mac-HowToClone.html
http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/7032/carbon-copy-cloner
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The DVD is dependent on your hardware. And your hardware changed. The drivers for the 5780 and 6xxx are bundled in the OS and lacking. Minimum build thing.
Put the new drive anywhere you want. Does not matter. Can move it later. Can be drive bay 0-3 or a Firewire external or under the DVD drive.
When you clone pull the old drive and boot from the newly cloned.
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Is it worth it to get this model repaired if its something major?

I was having a similar problem, except I only saw the grey apple logo, no spinning. Finally got it figured out, ended up being one of my processors (dual 1.8) was bad, took the bad one out and it works fine now. Now Im working on getting processor replaced.

Imac g5 won't boot from any Cd/DVD

Hey,
New member here.
I have an Imac 20" 1.8 Ghz PowerPC G5, running Mac OS X 10.4.9.
My problem is my computer won't boot from from any DVD or Cd, not the original system disc (10.3.5), not from a newer Imac system disc (10.4.7), not from a Disc Warrior 3.03 disc.
What I get from the Disc Warrior disc is a gray screen with white letters backed in black, saying
"panic (cpu 0 caller 0xooze49do): unable to find driver for this platform: "powermac8,1""
Plus other stuff written underneath it, looking like a log of how far it went.
When I try to boot from the original 10.3.5 DVD, it does boot up but doesn't work after that - it gets to the language to choose and stops.
When I try to boot from the 10.4.7 DVD, I get the gray screen, same results as the Disc Warrior cd.
I even copied my system folder (10.4.9) onto a firwire drive and start from that, but I get the gray screen again.
I zapped the pram, and reset the Open Firmware - still no dice.
Can anybody shed some light on this?!?
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Rufmanj

To Apple Discussions.
Please check out the following thread which the original posted had the same error you had.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=4459207#4459207
You may find some helpful troubleshooting solutions in the above thread.
Make absolutly sure you are using the "DVDs" that originally came with the computer.
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XServe won't boot from any drive, but recognizes them in OS X Installer

I know I have another post here but this is a different issue, and I've already fixed that one thanks to Camelot .
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The second however never booted into an install. That is, I never found it on my network when I started it up and when I pushed the power button it would turn off immediately, suggesting that there was no OS on the disk or that the xserve couldn't find it. I didn't have a spare monitor to plug into it (surprisingly) so I just chalked it up to the fact that it was a new disk and hadn't had OS X Server installed on it.
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MrHoffman wrote:
The EFI firmware, the SMC and possibly the disk I/O path seem good potential candidates for culprit.
Load and run the hardware diagnostics.
Reset the SMC, and reset the LOM.
I'm running the EFI diagnostic tool now. Firmware and disk I/O path came to mind, let's just hope it's not a major hardware issue
beatle20359 wrote:
Hi Jeff,
Do you have the specs of the xserve and the version of OSX server you are trying to install? Does the Xserve have the RAID card installed in it and what size are the drive modules.
All the best
Beatle
2x 3GHz Dual-Core Xeon
8GB RAM
OS X Server v 10.6.3 (the version I'm trying to install, that is)
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I've got an A300 that won't seem to boot from any device.
When I start it I see the splash screen and can enter the BIOS or Boot select.
I've tried setting boot priority to HDD & CD, and also chosen to boot from both with the Product Recovery CD in the drive.
However as soon as it gets past the splash screen I am just presented with a plain black screen.
I hear a bit of CD activity and the light flashes a couple of times but then nothing.
Normally I would expect a prompt to press a key to boot from CD.
I have tried pressing the key anyway but this just seems to result in a default beep.
Could it be the graphics card on the system board?

Hi
> Could it be the graphics card on the system board?
I think this is no matter if the issue would be related to mobo or GPU in both cases the motherboard needs to be replaced. But if you area able to access the BIOS then the mobo could be ok.
But generally speaking it sounds like serious hardware problem and I think its time for an notebook technician.
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The boot copy of Mavericks was installed with Disk Utility, so it shouldn't have had any problems.
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I shrank the partition on the other macbook to make a bootable firewire device on the other mac, and that partition also said "EFI BOOT" when clicked on.
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When I removed it, it was to install mavericks into it, via usb, with the other macbook, through disk utility, but disk utility was unable to read it then.
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It should only take a minute or so at most to boot from the DVD.
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http://www.apple.com/buy/locator/service/
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Hey Craig,
Here's my pics of where the GPU sits from an earlier discussion:
"This is the position of the GPU on top. That bay right below is where the hard drive goes and that's it's connector lower right:
http://s291.photobucket.com/albums/ll306/spudnuty/?action=view&current=13312GPUt op.jpg
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http://s291.photobucket.com/albums/ll306/spudnuty/?action=view&current=13312iBoo kGPUheatsink.jpg
The spot where I'd recommend applying pressure from underneath:
http://s291.photobucket.com/albums/ll306/spudnuty/?action=view&current=13312GPUu nderneath.jpg
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http://s291.photobucket.com/albums/ll306/spudnuty/?action=view&current=133GPUBot tomshield.jpg
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Richard
Message was edited by: spudnuty

2007 iMac won't boot from startup disc

My brother passed away and I inherited his Mid 2007 iMac. Works fine, but all accounts are still in his name and I do not have his passwords. Trying to wipe the hard drive and do a clean start, but unable to boot from startup disc. It was purchased with Snow Leopard, but has been updated to Lion 10.8.3. It appears that there may be a security feature that rejects any attempt to boot from startup disc. Is there another way to wipe hard drive and start clean?

Sorry for your loss ...
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