I purchased a Power Mac from a local college, help

[lawless23456]

hi all

i recently purchased a powermac g4 i think from my local college that had been on a network how to i make it homeworthy? i dont want it for much just a computer for my daughter to use, it only recognises the dvd drive saying 37gb is the size of the drive cant find any files or anything please help

lawless

 

[louishen]

need more info, a bit vague

does it start up, have you got the original discs

 

[dtravis7]

Does it have an Operating System on it? Does it boot up to an OS at all? If it does click on the Apple in the top left corner of the screen and on about this Mac and give us some specs. Can you attach a pic of the machine?

I have many older PowerMac G4's and can help you if I know a bit more about the machine.

 

[lawless23456]

havent got original discs, starts up fine but still thinks its on the network as when i start it up it trys looking for the network, i think its on 10.1 cant be to sure of that though, like previously said only want it for daughter to use for school work just wanna get it to work properly, when i try to format hard drive all the options are faded grey as in cant use them the machine has 256mb ram and 37gb hard disk thats all i know i will take a pic tomorrow and post

 

[dtravis7]

You can not format the Hard Drive because it's mounted. You would need a OSX CD. You can mess with the network settings and stop it looking for that school's network but on 10.1 it's been a while. Will get back to you. You might want to pick up a cheap copy of say 10.3 on Ebay as 10.1 is pretty old and will not do the best on the internet and run any of the newer and better applications out there for OSX.

 

[harryb2448]

As dtravis advises, look for a copy of Panther OS X.3 or Tiger OS X.4, full retail install discs, DVD if the unit has a combo drive CD if CD reader only, make sure full retail which are black coloured, and not the silver grey model specific discs.

Boot from the install disc by holding down 'C', go to Utilities and run Erase and then Repair Disc and proceed with the install.

Keep us posted?

 

[lawless23456]

i have made a mistake the mac i bought is a powerpc g4, and still failing to recognise the dvd drive which is making it hard to install panther

 

[louishen]

Are you

a) inserting the CD and closing the drive

B) hitting the power key with the CD in and immediately pressing the C key to force boot from CD

Also, as others have said, it is important that the disks are not grey coloured, unless you are certain they are the original grey restore disks that shipped with that machine

 

[harryb2448]

Early model Yikes! G4's did not come with a DVD reader, only CD reader installed. Can you check it is actually a DVD/Combo optical drive and if so maybe it has died as they are getting on.