Help! My Mac won't boot (G5 iMac on Panther 3.9)

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Hi guys,
I left my (pre intel G5) iMac for about an hour. Nothing has been usual lately (no slowness or hard drive noises etc) and it had gone into sleep mode. When I woke it up the screen was frozen.

I restarted and since then I have either got the dreaded question mark showing the OS can't detect the hard drive or I get a no entry sign instead of the Mac logo.

I have tried booting from some diagnostic disks and the harddrive doesn't appear in the list of drives to analyse (my external drive appears).

I have tried rebooting a few times and it has started up but then frozen after a minute or two.

I tried booting in safe mode and I am now getting the following message:
unable to find driver for this platform: "powermac8,1" and a whole bunch of other stuff...

Also no debugger congfigured - dumping debug information..

Panic.. we are hanging here ... etc!


Also I can't eject the disk utility desk now! I know you can hold down the mouse button and eject the desk but I don't have a mouse any more as I am using a graphics pad.. and it doesn't seem to be working with my graphics tablet... I tried holding down my tablet left button and instead of the chime was a long beep sound fropm the mac speaker which I've never heard a mac make before!!

Update - when trying to re-install the software (I tried the Panther, also the Tiger OS install disk) there are no destination drives to install to under 'Select a destination'.

It doesn't seem to be a hardware problem, but it may well be - but I have no ideas at the moment. Any ideas guys? Thanks in advance...
 
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Thanks for those resources, I'm still looking through them but unfortunately I don't think they are much help, although I will be reading the last one in more detail later. As a last resort the 'Resolving Kernel Panics' page says to re-install the system software from the disk, which I have already tried... but there are no listed harddrives in the 'select a destination' window when I try to re-install the system.

Again - disk utilities don't see any hard drives (other than any external drives I had plugged in)

I think this is a case for dead hard drive man...
 
M

MacHeadCase

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It could be RAM going bad as well. Did you install any third-party RAM ? If so, remove them and see if that doesn't help. If not, I've read on occasion that factory-installed RAM could be defective too but it doesn't happen too many times though.

And about the trying to reinstall OS X bit, did you try unplugging all unnecessary peripherals ? You mentioned your graphics tablet, I would unplug everything you don't need just in case it confuses the ailing system.

One beep, according to Apple.

Hope this helps. :)
 
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Thanks yes - everything unplugged (apart from a usb mouse!).

I had a similar problem about a year ago... but the hard drive was making clicking (i.e. obviously dead) sounds.. I replaced it and all was fine.

However, never thought RAM Could be an issue - I had some third part ram installed about 2-3 years ago... I'll remove it and see what happens when I get some time later.

As my time is limited (as I'm desperately trying to get work done on a very slow backup machine) I'm thinking of just trying a replacement drive if it's not the RAM.

It's SATA drive I know that part, but does anyone know the specs for a drive for this model? The pre-Intel (pre-isight) G5 iMac. The first G5 iMac.
 
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Well - I just eliminated the RAM thing... so it looks like the HD...

I have everything backed up (work files etc on another drive) - apart from somehow I missed my music and photos folders - so may have lost a year of photos and iTunes downloads.. but hopefully I can get the data off the drive another time
 
M

MacHeadCase

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Thanks yes - everything unplugged (apart from a usb mouse!).

I had a similar problem about a year ago... but the hard drive was making clicking (i.e. obviously dead) sounds.. I replaced it and all was fine.

However, never thought RAM Could be an issue - I had some third part ram installed about 2-3 years ago... I'll remove it and see what happens when I get some time later.

As my time is limited (as I'm desperately trying to get work done on a very slow backup machine) I'm thinking of just trying a replacement drive if it's not the RAM.

It's SATA drive I know that part, but does anyone know the specs for a drive for this model? The pre-Intel (pre-isight) G5 iMac. The first G5 iMac.

Clicking sounds ? That's a dead give-away to a failing hard drive. But it's really strange that you'd end up with two failing hard drives...
 
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Yes it is strange, however I do use the Machine quite heavily... the first hard drive to go was the original one, as above it made clicking/ticking sounds as it was a mechanical fault.

But the one I have now just died it seems.. and isn't detectable by any disk utilities.. and can't be seen when I access the drive via Firewire from another Mac.

I bought a new drive today and will post how it goes when I get the time to actually sit down and look at this!
 

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