iMac G4 Help Needed!

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Hey, I've never had a Mac before, and I am currently on a PC right now so please humor me. I recently got an iMac G4 from my friend. It came with all these Mac Leopard discs and things and it came with everything it might need. I think she might have erased everything off of it cause when it turns on it flashes the Mac apple thing and loads for a minute and then goes black and says
disk059:I/0emr
Jul 1 19:10:51 39 launchd can't exec/bin/sh for single user: input/output error
and that's it. I have like Mac Leopard discs and everything I just don't know what to do. I read online that the disc drive should be one where you can just slide in the disc, but on mine it has a drive that has to come out itself.
Update: I got the disk drive to come out by using this on the Mac website, I put the disc in and it still doesn't work even after I tried holding down the c key when I was supposed to. Please help!
 
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'day and welcome to the forums.

To put Leopard on the iMac, it needs to be faster than 867MHz, and the install discs need to be black and not silver/grey discs which are extremely model specific. Does it load any operating system? If so go into System Preferences, pop in the Leopard disc, and under Startup Disc, select the Leopard DVD and reboot.

If not and you cannot boot from the Leopard disc, either it is the wrong type of disc or the optical drive may have failed which is a common fault with iMacs.
 
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'day and welcome to the forums.

To put Leopard on the iMac, it needs to be faster than 867MHz, and the install discs need to be black and not silver/grey discs which are extremely model specific. Does it load any operating system? If so go into System Preferences, pop in the Leopard disc, and under Startup Disc, select the Leopard DVD and reboot.

If not and you cannot boot from the Leopard disc, either it is the wrong type of disc or the optical drive may have failed which is a common fault with iMacs.
Thanks for the help. Uh, I really don't know...I made a video of what it does when I try to boot it up: YouTube - ‪iMac G4 HELP NEEDED!!‬‏ That's all that it will do. Can you tell whats wrong?
 

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First off, it's booting to the 1st boot screen with just the Apple then moving on to the 2nd with the spinning circle.

Second, that box you held up is Snow Leopard and not Leopard. Snow Leopard is INTEL ONLY! Your machine a G4 which is a Power PC CPU. Snow Leopard will NOT run on a Power PC CPU. Is that the only OSX DVD that came with the machine? I am shocked it even gets that far in the boot.

Depending on the model iMac, you need either Leopard (If it's a G4 867 Mhz or higher), or if it's an older and slower G4, you need Tiger.

Can you look on the base and see if you can find the label with the Specs? Tell us the CPU. Can you take a close up picture of the DVD and also the Box you held in that video?

There is no way you can ever boot on that Power PC from the Snow leopard DVD.
 
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First off, it's booting to the 1st boot screen with just the Apple then moving on to the 2nd with the spinning circle.

Second, that box you held up is Snow Leopard and not Leopard. Snow Leopard is INTEL ONLY! Your machine a G4 which is a Power PC CPU. Snow Leopard will NOT run on a Power PC CPU. Is that the only OSX DVD that came with the machine? I am shocked it even gets that far in the boot.

Depending on the model iMac, you need either Leopard (If it's a G4 867 Mhz or higher), or if it's an older and slower G4, you need Tiger.

Can you look on the base and see if you can find the label with the Specs? Tell us the CPU. Can you take a close up picture of the DVD and also the Box you held in that video?

There is no way you can ever boot on that Power PC from the Snow leopard DVD.
How do I find the CPU? Which number is it?
I took some pictures, I have lots of discs. Just let me upload them.
 

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Since you can not boot into a working OS, look on the bottom of the base for a little label with the specs. If that is still intact it will give the CPU specs as well as RAM it shipped with and other specs.


Also how large is the LCD? 15"? 17'?

Waiting for the pics.
 
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First off, it's booting to the 1st boot screen with just the Apple then moving on to the 2nd with the spinning circle.

Second, that box you held up is Snow Leopard and not Leopard. Snow Leopard is INTEL ONLY! Your machine a G4 which is a Power PC CPU. Snow Leopard will NOT run on a Power PC CPU. Is that the only OSX DVD that came with the machine? I am shocked it even gets that far in the boot.

Depending on the model iMac, you need either Leopard (If it's a G4 867 Mhz or higher), or if it's an older and slower G4, you need Tiger.

Can you look on the base and see if you can find the label with the Specs? Tell us the CPU. Can you take a close up picture of the DVD and also the Box you held in that video?

There is no way you can ever boot on that Power PC from the Snow leopard DVD.
Update: Here, I took pictures of the three discs. I still don't know how to find the CPU thingy.
100_1398.jpg
100_1399.jpg
100_1400.jpg
 
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Since you can not boot into a working OS, look on the bottom of the base for a little label with the specs. If that is still intact it will give the CPU specs as well as RAM it shipped with and other specs.


Also how large is the LCD? 15"? 17'?

Waiting for the pics.

I uploaded them but it said a Moderator or something had to approve it first.
100_1400.jpg
100_1399.jpg
100_1398.jpg
There I just put them in.
 

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Got the pics. That first one is Snow Leopard. That will in no way install on that old Non Intel iMac. The 2nd looks like the CD that came with the iMac. It's Gray. Have you tried that CD in the drive holding down C?

Please look for that Spec label on the base of the machine.
 
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Got the pics. That first one is Snow Leopard. That will in no way install on that old Non Intel iMac. The 2nd looks like the CD that came with the iMac. It's Gray. Have you tried that CD in the drive holding down C?

Please look for that Spec label on the base of the machine.
Okay, I tried putting the disc in and then I rebooted it and held down C but then it just did what it always does. I pushed down C after the tone and held it down until the little Apple popped up, did I let go too soon?
 

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What did it do? Same as booting from the hard drive? That error message?

No you did it right, You press the C right after the Startup Sound and keep it down till the first screen with Apple comes up.
 
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What did it do? Same as booting from the hard drive? That error message?

No you did it right, You press the C right after the Startup Sound and keep it down till the first screen with Apple comes up.
Yeah, it did the same thing it did in the video. D:
 

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Were you able to find that Specs label? I have seen a few of the G4's like that and they did have it somewhere on the base of the machine.

That boot screen at the end is showing Safe Mode. Interesting even the Gray DVD is booting in that mode.
 
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Were you able to find that Specs label? I have seen a few of the G4's like that and they did have it somewhere on the base of the machine.

That boot screen at the end is showing Safe Mode. Interesting even the Gray DVD is booting in that mode.

There is something on the bottom, it says Serial Number and a bunch of letters and number
a row below it just with letters and numbers
and then one below it that says Ethernet and I think some numbers.
 

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Can you post the numbers there and what they say by them? I might be able to find something on what model you have.
 
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Can you post the numbers there and what they say by them? I might be able to find something on what model you have.

For which? Serial number, random numbers below, or Ethernet.
 
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Okay, here I wrote down everything on the bottom of the machine.
Serial No.: QP3081G6NHX
1. OGHz/256RAM/80HD
I think that's them, there may be a minor error as it was really hard to read.
 

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Another thing, I wonder if it's booting off the DVD or just ignoring it and booting off the Hard Drive and that is why you get the same boot error. If it's booting off the CD/DVD it will take longer.

Another thing I am wondering if that Gray CD/DVD is the one that came with the iMac? If not you will get an error booting.
 
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Then it looks like it's a 1Ghz G4. I hope the RAM is more than 256MB though! :D

That will run Leopard 10.5 for sure but like I said, I hope the RAM has been upgraded. But just to say this again, the Snow Leopard DVD is useless on that machine.

Looking it up now. Will post a URL in a few.

You never told us the size of the LCD, but it either this if it's a 17":

17" iMac G4/1 GHz

Or this if it's a 15" LCD:

15" iMac G4/1 GHz (USB 2.0)
Oh heh, alright!
Uhm, I measured it diagonally and it read 17 inches. ^-^'
 

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