Water Accident - Not finding hdd...

Hello all,

My girlfriend recently emptied an entire 1L bottle of dasani into my 15" G4 Powerbook, but didn't know to turn it off, remove the battery and unplug the power brick. I am a nightclub dj, and I use my laptop 4x/week to run Rane Serato Scratch, so I had to immediately replace it. I got a new MacBookPro, but I still have the powerbook.

Today was the first day I had some free time, so I decided to take apart the old powerbook, and assess the damage. It is completely dried out now, so I put her all back together... and Powered it up.

Speakers... check
Screen... check
Superdrive...check
Hard drive...nope.

It gets all the way to the error, with the flashing folder signifying inability to find the OS.

I pulled the drive, and the drive works fine in an external enclosure, as well as another friend's identical Powerbook. I tried to re-install Tiger via. the install DVD, and it tries (so I know my superdrive survived), but it finds no available disks to install the OS.

What could this be? Any suggestions, tips, tricks???

Hopefully I can get this thing fixed so I can sell it to recoup some of the MacBookPro costs (the money came out of my WRX STi fund, so it needs to be replaced asap :headphone)

Thanks in advance!

is it a full version tiger or the upgrade?

Full version Retail install dvd.

whoa....honestly, I have no idea. but how on earth did it happen?

I'm guessing some of the connections are fried in your Powerbook. You can always run your system off an external firewire drive (will be a little slower). But reinstalling OS X won't solve anything, at least from what I'm reading here.

And if you try to sell it, even if you fix it, if you're honest about the water damage, you either will find it very difficult to get a buyer or won't be able to sell it for much because who knows what else might be wrong with it.

My advice: just recycle it and be done with it. Oh, and find a new girlfriend

I am guessing your ide controller is fried, since it has close contacts, wetting it while working might have done the trick

check the ide cable is cleaned up ok,you used your or yr friends cable in your friends powerbook?