01-05-2011, 10:53 PM

Hello,

First off, I am a Mac noob. I am very familiar with PCs and there hardware, software, etc. but Macs are kind of 'alien' to me. But I want to learn about them.

That being said, I have a G4 MDD with dual 1.25ghz cpus and 512MB RAM. I got this Mac used and it would not power up. I repaired the power supply and can now power up the Mac. I also replaced the battery on the motherboard.

Now that I have power, I am unable to get the OS to install. I have a restore disc and a software install disc but I do not know if these are the original ones for this machine. They just say PowerMac G4 on them. I also have a copy of 10.5.6.

If I hold down the C key when booting with any of these discs, it goes to the gray screen with the alternating icon of a folder with a question mark and a Mac logo on it. If I hold down the Option key while powering on I get to a screen with a curved (refresh) icon and an arrow pointing right.

With the Restore or Install discs, it just shows those two icons. With the 10.5.6 disc, it shows an icon of the OSX Disc. If I click the right icon with the arrow pointing to the right, it goes to a gray screen with an Apple logo and nothing else.

I have let it sit there for over an hour and it has not made any progress. I would really like to get this thing working. Does anyone have any ideas???

Sorry for the long post and thanks for any help.

01-06-2011, 04:09 PM

G'day and welcome to the forums.

The only restore disc that will work is the one that came with the machine when it was new and that was certainly not OS X.5, probably Jaguar OS X.2 or even OS 9 Classic. They are extremely model specific the silver/gray coloured discs. You need a black coloured full retail install DVD worth around $125.00.