My G4 is making me sad. Please unsad us.

Question

I was given two Power Mac G4 computers to attempt to sell. My friend's office was throwing them out and I thought I could get some money for food by fixing them up and selling them off. (When you're a poor student you take work where you can find it). The machines came without hard-drives. "No problem", I thought. "How hard can installing an operating system on these be?"
My first roadblock came in the form of the subtle product updates Apple had pushed in the early noughts. It turns out now, on reflection, that I have a Power Mac G4 FW800 and an MDD model from 2002. On first attempt, however, this completely foxed me. Not only are the two machines COMPLETELY INDISTINGUISHABLE FROM ONE ANOTHER save for a port on the back of one that I had to strain to notice, but one will refuse to boot OS 9 (apparently) and one will take it and run with it (apparently.)
After a few hours of navigating Apple's delightfully vague, mostly-pictureless instruction manuals and eventually figuring out my model dilemma, I set to work putting an operating system on them. "OS X will do", I thought and, taking out my OS 10.4.0 DVDs that had served me well thus far, I attempted to get the CD drive open. No such luck.
It turns out that Apple are a little picky on what keyboards you use to get them to access the boot menu, and none of the keyboards I had were trendy enough for it to talk to. After a few days of attempting to coerce it to work like a normal computer should, I eventually realised I was dealing with a Macintosh and went out and bought an official Apple graphite Pro keyboard. £20 lighter, but hey; it's an investment, right?
So, after plugging it in and holding down the 'alt' key for five minutes while it decided whether or not it wanted to boot, I was eventually greeted by a blue screen with two arrows on it. Nothing more. I placed the OS X DVD in the tray (now I had a keyboard cool enough to have an Eject key) and hit the button that looked like it might be a refresher. Wait a few minutes. Nothing.
I spent another few days trying to figure out what was going on until I downloaded an OS 9 DMG to a CD and managed to boot from that. (Piracy? Shock horror! But don't rage-quit quite yet, it gets even better!) I EVENTUALLY got to a rather promising looking OS 9 desktop, where I was told I was running a Power Mac G4 installer CD. Result! And I wasn't even paying attention.
Somewhere in the mess of folders I managed to find a system analysis tool that informed me that my Macintosh has CD drives instead of DVD drives. And before you start getting ideas, they're Apple official. I just wish it had said on the side of the bay or something, since I distinctly remember seeing that these G4s had SuperDrives. Oh well, now I know, at least. May as well try to install to the hard-drive I clicked in a while ago. Oh wait, what's this?
"This software will not run on your computer."
And you thought my happy story was over! Turns out you need to have pretty much the exact CD that came with the system to install anything close to an operating system on them. I am aware of no other solution to get a computer in my situation to work as it was intended to by Apple. Well, I didn't figure I'd get very far with a pirated OS 9 CD, so, my tail between my legs, I did what any computer technician worth their salt does in times of trouble and called Apple technical support.
After a few hours of being told how important my call was I was directed to a very nice Scot called Andrew, who immediately asked me my name in return. After making something up (Podmen or something) I informed him of my predicament in my puppy-dog voice. His words:
"Yeah, see, mate, we have these listed as Vintage here, so, uh, I don't know... you might try eBay, I suppose?"
eBay?
Seriously.... eBay?
Well, I suppose Andrew isn't to be blamed. And he did have a point- eBay has long provided solace for customers left in the rain by careless company standards and practices. So, like a good little consumer I jetted off back to eBay to make a few more hurried purchases.
My first purchase was of a FireWire 400 DVD enclosure so I could slot in a drive and use DVDs. I'd love to have used one of the nine USB enclosures I have at home, but due to astoundingly poor product design it turns out G4s won't boot from USB devices- only firewire! Boy, was my face red after figuring that one out. The day it arrived I tore the packaging off like a child at christmas and hooked it up, OS X DVD inside, fingers growing into the ALT key. After many years I was treated with a blue screen with two arrows and- is that..? Yes! I'm getting something to boot! Or....
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/7815/dsc00590a.jpg
(No lower resolution? NO WAY! You must feel my pain in FULL SIZE.)
Oh no, they're hanging! That means I am hanging also! These discs have never failed me before.. I wonder what the problem is?
After spending a few hours (seriously) on IRC and Google, it turns out the discs I was using were Intel only, thanks to Apple's truly exemplary support during their painful PowerPC-Intel switchover. Well, thanks for the informative kernel panic. Really. God knows what I would have done if you hadn't spelled it out for me there, in amongst the zeroes.
So, back on eBay, I bought an OS X 10.0.3 CD. This one looked perfect. It's an early version, so it'd work for multi-platform, and it'd probably work for my early model. What could possibly go wrong?!
http://img24.imageshack.us/img24/9948/dsc00596h.jpg
(Just as a quick note, if you're not loading these images you're missing out. Only with my shaky photos can you see the full extent of my CAPS LOCK RAGE.)
What could go wrong, indeed.
Another example of careless and abysmal software design from our good friends at Infinite Loop. Put yourself in my shoes for a minute here. You spend £30 on an OS X CD and place it in, and this is the error you receive. What do you think?
a) The disc is damaged.
b) The disc cannot find a startup drive.
c) The disc is not designed for this system.
d) The disc has been loaded at the wrong time.
e) NOTHING, because all you're being shown is a STILL IMAGE, as opposed to something USEFUL like an ERROR CODE or SYNOPSIS or a CORE DUMP. Are these words greek to Apple? Or did they just think cluttering up their system with something fleeting like INFORMATION would ruin the simple, streamlined macintosh image? I'm veering towards the latter at the moment. Thanks, Apple, for making my errors pretty. Those google-able blue screens were ugly anyway.
Before someone who's only read half the thread dives in with useful information, I'm able to look up errors myself. Turns out this is the definitive, no-frills cause:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1892
This was the closest I could find, and it isn't useful. I'm getting these errors from a CD I'm attempting to boot from. These machines have hard-drives, formatted in FAT32, connected up. Obviously Mac OS X cannot read from them if it's reading from anything (in which case I need a way to format the drive so the installer will accept it and boot its LiveCD operating system) and if it isn't, then what's wrong? I don't know. All of Apple's support items revolve around reinstalling (useful!) or resetting the PRAM, which I've done about a billion times. I don't know why I bother closing those obscenely heavy doors anymore, I really don't.
Back to eBay, then? Any other ideas? Anyone? Apple? Ha ha ha ha! eBay, you're up.
My next purchase- can you see a pattern here yet?- was a set of OS 9 CDs. They say "Power Mac G4" on them! How can these be bad? I still have a good feeling about these CDs. (I still have a good feeling about the OS X CD I was robbed for.) So, after removing them from the trendy Apple paper folder (top marks for presentation, Apple, really) and placing the disc marked "Install Disc" into the CD drive and rebooting with a weight on the ALT key, I sat and waited.
Nothing.
I am presented with a blue boot screen and the machine does not even have the common courtesy to show me the content of the CD I just spent a lot of money on. I don't even know if the disc works. Apple software is not telling me ANYTHING. As per flaming usual I am left to fend for myself.
I try with the CD marked 'Software repair', and the CD drive just spits that back out. It leaves a bad taste in your mouth, G4? Imagine how I feel having paid for the thing!
I'm not beaten yet. I am Iron Man. I am unbeatable.
I boot from my pirated OS 9 CD (in the firewire drive) with the Genuine OS 9 CD in the G4's host drive and boot. Or at least, try to.
Half of the time all I receive is a picture of a floppy disk with a flashing question mark on it. Once again, thanks very much Apple, this looks gorgeous, but what does it mean? WHY DON'T YOU TELL ME?
I reboot, and I receive the 'Welcome to Mac OS' CD boot I've become accustomed to seeing- but wait, what's this?
Sorry, a serious error has occurred.
unimplemented trap
http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/4779/dsc00601v.jpg
Unimplemented what?
I googled the error (SEE HOW EASY THINGS CAN BE IF YOU PROVIDE TEXT) and it seems to be something banal about calling a process that isn't there. Maybe the CD is dirty. Maybe all the CDs I've bought so far have resisted my attempts at cleaning them before use and maybe every hard drive I've clicked into the G4 has contained the exact code to turn it into a brick. It's possible. I don't know and nobody seems to want to tell me.
So that's my current situation. I have official OS 9 and 10 CDs, and the only one that'll get me anywhere away from bland, useless icon screens is one I got from the Pirate Bay. Irony much? I don't know any more.
Here is the current haul of Macintosh Discs I have thrown my money away for:
http://img18.imageshack.us/img18/5458/dsc00602l.jpg
If you know someone I can throw money at to get a working fix, please, god, tell me. If you do, in fact, know ANY way I can get these machines to work having considered everything I've told you in this thread, then please, PLEASE, tell me. I don't want these machines to go to waste. I just don't want to see folders and question marks any more either. Is that too much to ask?
(On the other foot, I do really feel like part of the Mac community now I've spent a few hundred pounds on complete wastes of money. It feels so good to belong, you guys. So good. Keep in touch.)
Message was edited by: Moderator

Answer 1

Okay...I feel some of your pain and frustration,but maybe finding a Mac site, either here at Apple's or other Mac troubleshooting forums could've help you right at the beginning of all this.
Ranting doesn't help your cause, either...
But, Oh well...
Let's start from the beginning. One of the things you may need to get both of these machines running is a new PRAM battery. Depending how long these machines had been lying around (unpowered), these maybe dead or low on voltage power,
If you open both Macs, look for a half/size AA battery. I would recommend trying a local electronics dealer, Apple store/online, or Apple reseller/online or where you live to get 2 fresh batteries and when you get them install them in both machines.
Now, OS CD's, the "official" OS 9 CD's should have a white background w/orange"9" on them. The OS X Panther CD's should have a black background with large silver/chrome "X" on them. The OS X Tiger DVD is similar, but is a DVD. You might be able to call and ask Apple if they have any Tiger CD's left as these were only available upon request and I believe proof of purchase of OS X 10.4 discs and I believe also there was a charge for the CD's also.
There are "gray" discs out there that are only Mac "machine specific" discs.
If you have these they do not work w/ your Macs. However, if you have or know of "gray-colored" discs that came with your two Macs, you should be able to use these. Obviously, from your post, you do not have these or know what may have come of them. So, you need the "official" Mac "Retail" versions of the OS install discs.
Yes, G4's came with options for drives and as you have discovered, you only have drives with CD-RW/DVD-R (read-only)drives. You still be able to use DVD install discs, but you cannot "burn" or make custom DVD's with these drives.
The official OS X 10.3 Panther discs should work on the G4 FW800 model Mac.
The hard drives you installed need to be reformatted to Mac OS extended format.
We need to start with the G4 w/FW800, first.
Install the OS10.3 Panther CD or OS 10.4 Tiger DVD into the Mac. Hold the "C" key down until you see the gray Apple screen and a spinning gear. Once the gear starts spinning, let go of "C" key and let the Mac boot to the CD. If you make it to the blue desktop with menus, dock, folders and icons, you need to go to the utilities menu at the top of the main menu, look for an app called Disk Utility and launch it. A screen appears with 2 windows in it. Select the drive/s that appear in the 1st window and in the second pick the erase button.
Once the drive is erased, there should be an area that says format and it's here you can reformat the drive as Mac OS extended and a partition button if you decide you want to partition the drive. Proceed to do this and your Mac's HD's will be properly formatted to accept OS X. Quit Disk Utility by going up to where the name of the application is in the top menu, click on its name and select quit from the drop down menu.
Then continue with the installation of Mac OS X until complete.
Hopefully when done, OS X will be installed on the Mac and there will be a welcome screen and a series of things you need to do to get up and running.
Once back to the desktop, go down to the dock and pick your home icon. Look for an icon/folder that says Applications. In that folder look for a folder called Utilities. Look for Disk Utillity app and launch it.
Pick the drive you are booted to in the 1st column and in the second column run fix disk permissions.
You are, basically, at this point, done with the installation and ready to use this Mac.
For the 2002 G4 MDD, things are a little different, you'll need to run OS 9 (9.2 or later) on this machine, first before updating to OS X. These G4's needed a firmware updater, before using OS X and you'll need to check for this to see if the updater has been done or not before you can proceed with an OS X install.
To install OS 9, you'll need to put the disk in the drive and hold down the "C" key to get the CD to boot.
If you make to the install screen you need to look for a folder that Has OS 9 utilities and look for a program called drive setup. Dble click to launch this and pick the drives you wish to format and pick Mac OS extended from the list of options. Once formatted, quit Drive setup and proceed with the install.
If installation was successful, you should be able to boot the computer normally and it should come up with the OS 9 desktop. If the OS 9 install is of an older version of OS 9, you'll need to update to at least OS 9.2 before attempting an install of OS X.
Once updated to 9.2, you'll need to download this firmware updater and run it.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120171
If you run this and a message says that your firmware is up to date, do not continue to run this program.
If it dosen't appear, ten let this run until completed and follow its instructions, if any.
Once this is done, NOW you can follow my previous instructions for installing OS X (minus having to format the drive again as you've already did this in OS 9) on the G4 FW800 Mac.
Hope this is a help to you.
Good Luck!!