Dead G4 iBook to new MacBook Air transfer

Hi guys,

wondering if anyone can help me rescue my life from an unresponsive iBook G4...

Here's the tale... I was working happily on the road on my 2005 G4 iBook when gradually the keyboard started doing weird things... keys needed repeated hits to work, some set cursor zipping to end of line or beginning - that sort of thing...

I persevered until one day it finally hung while doing several things at once...

I removed the battery and re-inserted it, to kill the spinny beach ball but it refused to start-up - I could hear the drive (or fan, at least) start to spin up but then nothing - it just gave me a grey screen with a spinning graphic as it sat doing nothing...

Cue a couple of weeks later when I got home... inserted OS X discs I got with the lappy and forced it to boot from them... success... OS X asked me to reinstall Leopard, then Lion, which happened successfully... then it asked me to restart...

iBook will still not restart on its own...

I now have a spanking brand new MB Air but apparently, as I only have USB and Thunderbird ports, there is no way to connect my iBook as an external drive even if I can force it to start up as one... there is also - apparently - no way to connect my Firewire external drive which holds most of my data backed-up and all of my iTunes library...

So, I want to rescue all my contacts, music, emails, invoicing and accounts details, documents etc from the old lappy (programmes I'm not fussed about TBH, as many were for PPC and won't work on my Intel machine)...

How do I do it??

Can anyone suggest a way to force my iBook to start up, so I can back it all up to a USB drive and transfer it to the Air that way?

Can anyone suggest how to connect the external firewire drive to the Air? It's a Seagate FreeAgent Go firewire drive - it has a mini USB port but that doesn't seem to allow the drive to be recognised by the Air, so I assume it's just for external power or to piggyback another device, perhaps?

If my music is backed up on the USB drive, how do I tell iTunes to import it as the Library or will it be much easier to just plug in my iPod and hope that iTunes allows it to sync, as I am still using the same iTunes identity, even though it's on a different machine from the one it's authorised on?
Should I just use Music Rescue or something to transfer the tunes to iTunes?

All these and many more questions - hope you guys can help, as I am pretty much stuck at the moment...

Over to the Brains Trust...

*** did you manage to install Lion on a G4?

Anyhow, can you start up the G4 in safe mode?

Start up into Safe Mode (to Safe Boot)

Be sure your Mac is shut down.
Press the power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple icon and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).


Otherwise consider making an appointment at an apple store and get them to do the transfer

Just tried that a couple of times but all I get is the grey apple screen - not even a spinning logo...

Won't get a chance to go to an Apple Store for at least 7 weeks... really need to rescue stuff before that, as I am already a month behind with invoicing...

Can you manage to install a copy of Leopard onto the firewire or USB drive and boot the G4 from that?

There is an Apple store nearby in Solihull

I have managed to get it to boot from the Tiger disc and then I reinstalled OSX and upgraded to Tiger - all seemed happy... until I had to restart without using the disc... wouldn't do it...

Can't access my Firewire drive from the Air to put anything on it... not sure whether I can load Tiger onto the USB terabyte drive and try to force a start from that...

alternatively, if I force it to start from OSX discs, can I then just use the lappy normally, to access and transfer everything?

Last time it wouldn't let me get to the desktop...

OK... now, with OSX disc in cd drive, I have managed to get some life from it by starting and holding C...

It's now asking me to install OS X...

Did this before and spent hours re-installing OSX then Tiger... is there a way to move from here to desktop?

OOH, just found I can open Disk Utility from the Boot area... will verify and repair everything - other suggestions??

Disc spinning away but verifying disc starts then seems to crash...

No, you cannot run they finder from the install disks

Have you tried booting the G4 while pressing the alt key to see if it sees any boot drives at all

Verifying disc rather than starting with verifying disc permissions...

It now tells me that the HD appears to be OK... 'Volume passed verification'

Will now try repair disc

louishen said:

No, you cannot run they finder from the install disks

Have you tried booting the G4 while pressing the alt key to see if it sees any boot drives at all

Click to expand...

Will finish verifying and repairing discs as far as I can and then quit, so I can try that...

Disc Utility was happy enough repairing disc and repairing disc permissions but crashes when verifying disc or permissions...

Have to leave it now for a day or so...

On another note. If you want to boot the G4 into an operating system and be able to see and copy files on drives try the Ubuntu live CD

Ubuntu 8.04.1 LTS (Hardy Heron)

Its the first link Mac (PowerPC) and IBM-PPC (POWER5) desktop CD

You will need a working computer with a burner but that disc will boot a G4 when you press the alt key and give you a working OS that will recognise any drives connected

Currently using OS X disc to archive old operating system and install a new one, in the hope that it might boot... also downloading Ubuntu and will burn it (I hope) on my Air SuperDrive, then try that...

OK, finished up reloading OS X - restarted - grey apple screen without even a whirly 'working' icon...

Restarting with C key held down makes it do things but not helping much...

If you are going to go the Ubuntu route, make sure you use Dusk Utility to burn the downloaded ISO image

How to burn ISO disc images - Mac OS X Hints

louishen said:

No, you cannot run they finder from the install disks

Have you tried booting the G4 while pressing the alt key to see if it sees any boot drives at all

Click to expand...

Pressing the Power button while holding Alt gives me a screen indicating my HD and DVD drives, with a 'repeat' kind of semi-circular arrow and also a 'continue' right-pointing arrow...

The HD drive is pre-selected, so I have clicked on the 'continue' arrow... grey Apple screen appears but - as usual - no whirly progress wheel... Another blank...

Have downloaded Ubuntu and burned .iso file onto disc as instructed...

Started iBook holding down C

Dialog appeared on screen, offering options so went with straight-forward boot... Went to a black screen and stayed there...

Powered iBook down.

Now trying to force start again using C...