Catastrophe with G4!

Long story short:

I have a G4 Dual 500MHz power PC with 768 Mb memory. It is quite old and was creaking so I just bought a new iMac 24" 2.8Ghz.

I tried to copy from G4 to iMac but iMac could not see the target drive (worked fine with laptop).

Mac help said I must upgrade Tiger from 10.4.8 to 10.4.11 using software update. (The laptop has 10.4.11).

Software update run on the G4 failed to find an OSX upgrade, so I tried to do it manually from the Apple website. At the end of this process I got a fail message. On trying to restart the G4 it will not boot up at all.

I tried booting up in safe mode and selecting the HD that way, but all I get is a black screen (reminds me of DOS).

Luckily I have another drive on the G4 that I use as a backup. That has most data on it and a copy of 10.4.8 so I can get into the computer.

The data on the original hard drive is not missing, as I have been able to access it with an Iomega 1Tb drive that I use for the iMac Time Machine backup.

I would like to restore the original G4 HD to normal operation but have no idea what to do. I do not have the original discs anymore as I bought this machine several years ago and have no idea where they are.

Any expert help would be much appreciated.

Thank you

Adrian

If your external drive has 10.4.8 on it, then restart, hold down the Option key. You will get a screen with the icon of that drive (and probably the internal drive). Boot from the 10.4.8 drive. There isn't any reason to update to 10.4.11 in order to migrate your data to your new Mac. Migration Assistant doesn't care what operating system is running, it ignores the System on the Target drive anyway. Does your G4 not boot in Target Mode?

10.4.8 is not on the Iomega external drive. However it is in the back up drive on the G4. I can start the G4 using the backup drive, I just don't know how to get the original hard drive to work again. I can see the drive on the desktop when I use the backup as the start drive. I need to know how to get rid of the operating system on it and get back to 10.4.8.

Apple were adamant that I had to do the upgrade on the G4. The reason was that when I started the G4 in target disc mode, that firewire icon would appear on the G4 but the iMac could not see the G4.

I had already checked that the firewire cable was OK and that the ports were OK on both computers (as I used my laptop as a test machine).

It is very frustrating as the G4 HD would do things that the back up drive will not do. For example, the back up drive ignores any efforts I make to install different users, so my son's identity appears - but he gets access to all my data.

You absolutely do not have to do the update! Target Disk mode and the Migration Assistant would work with any version of OS X, including Panther and Jaguar. The Apple rep may have been confused as to why the G4 isn't showing up on the iMac. The fact that the G4 goes into Target Mode means that there is something wrong with the G4 firewire port, or cable, or iMac firewire port.
When you say that you tested the firewire chain, what did you do?

Sherman thank you for your help. My test procedure was this:

Connect powerbook to new iMac and transfer data to iMac with powerbook in target disk mode. Worked fine. 10.4.11 to 10.5.2

Connect G4 tower to new iMac using same fire wire cable and port on iMac. Started G4 in target disc mode and firewire icon came up on cinema screen. However, the G4 did not appear on the iMac. 10.4.8 to 10.5.2

Checked G4 port by connecting G4 to powerbook using same cable. G4 in target mode did appear on laptop and data transfer was possible. (Far more data on G4 than space on laptop, so I did not use laptop as an intermediate drive). Both 400 firewire ports on the G4 worked fine. 10.4.8 to 10.4.11

Called Apple. Tried various re-start procedures on iMac and G4, including clearing the PRAM. Still no joy so escalated to technical specialist at Apple.

Two lots of queuing for 50 minutes. Cut off twice. Finally I insisted they call me back, which they did after making a big fuss about how annoyed the technical specialist would be. That is a mere aside...

This technical specialist person insisted I must upgrade the G4 from 10.4.8 to 10.4.11 as that was most likely the problem.

So I did that and that is when my problems began.

Reverted to Apple help by phone. And here is the really cool part with Apple "service". Applecare only covers the new iMac not the old G4, so they refused to help, even though the problem originated from the supposedly very easy and painless migration to a new machine and from the steps that they insisted I take with the old machine. Thanks Apple!

So I bought a 1Tb Iomega drive (which I would have bought anyway) to back up the iMac. Connected this to G4 and copied all the data files across. Then coped them off the Iomega to the iMac. A bit laborious but it worked fine except I don't know how to restore my email history (Entourage) from the G4 into an archive.

So. I have not lost any data (or only a trivial amount) because I had a back up drive on the G4 that I can use for booting up.

But I would like to get the G4 working properly again as it did before so that it can be installed in my son's room. For some reason I cannot configure the backup drive to do the same as the original HD as described above.

Incidentally I have not tried connecting the G4 started with backup disc to the iMac to see if that works in target mode. I am wary of trying this as I do not want a completely dead G4. I have had previous problems with the G4 refusing to exit target disc mode despite re-starts.

Thanks

Adrian