Hello My name is Mark. I'm new to your forum as I am new to apple computers. I've searched around the forum and gained alot of useful knowledge, and I thank all for that. I'm A+ certified and have no previous experience with Mac computers before. I'm trying to help out a friend with his iBook G4 late 2004 edition notebook. I'm pretty sure I'm posting in the correct place as I think that the problem is hardware related. Here is the problem, and the things that I have tried as I have learned from your wonderful site.
When trying to boot the system it will show the apple icon with spinning gear, then go to a blue screen with a graphic say that says Mac OS X and below that Starting Mac OS X with a blue status bar that goes about 75% across, then goes away to just the blue screen with a black and white cursor in the upper left corner and idles there, the cursor can be moved but thats about it.
The friend bought it new as a factory refurbished item and can't find the discs. I have used different dics with this system which I will go into later.
I've also tried a safe boot (power on hold down shift key) and it goes to the apple icon spinning gear page. Then after a few minutes it will go to a blue screen with tha Mac OS X safe boot log on screen with his user name displayed. Afyer typing in his password it will display a stripped status bar and starting boot message. Then it will go to a Blue screen with some swatches of light looking wallpaper. then after a few minutes it will go to the plane blue screen with the black and white cursor in the upper left corner and stall. at this point the cursor is frozen in its place.
I've also did a single user boot (power on while holding the command-S key) which booted to a black screen with white lettering. From here I ran the /sbin/fsck -fy command which seemed to run a few tests and at the end said The Volume n seems to be ok.
I tried to reset the PRAM by holding the command-option-p-r keys while booting untill 3 chimes
I obtained a retail Black Disc of X 10.4.2 and tried to boot while holding the c key down goes to the spinning gear. I booted while holding the option key down. That took me to a screen where i could boot from the HDD n or the disc drive that showed that it had a OS X disc in it, went to the spinning gear with either option.
I also obtained a disc set that was to have been from a G4 when it was new. the discs are gray and say iBook G4 mac OS X install discs 1,2, and 3. When booting from disc 1 I just get the spinning gear. This set also came with a Apple Hardware test disc that says G4 on it version 2.0.2. When booting from this disc it goes to a grey screen with white lettering. the first 2 lines are errors loading 2 different fonts the next 2 lines are TYPE err codes then the next line says Invalid memory access at @SRR0: 00000000 @SRR1: 00083030 then the build date and version numbers then
firmware and system date which BTW is 01/01/1904 then displays instructions for mac-boot and shut-down the next line says "release keys to continue" which I don't understand what is meant. My other question at this screen is are there other commands that I can use here. and is it not fully booting to the test utilities.
Because of the memory error message I am thinkig at this point that ther is a memory issue. the only memory is the on board 256. I have tried to add memory to the empty slot under the keyboard withthe sams results as above. Would the machine try to boot into some aspects of running with a memory problem?
I have had the machine completley apart and besides being a little dirty it looked good i.e. no liquid damage or other physical damage.
I'm hoping for some expert advice here and hope you all apprieate the extensive work and research that I have done before posting here.
Thanks in advance Mark
When trying to boot the system it will show the apple icon with spinning gear, then go to a blue screen with a graphic say that says Mac OS X and below that Starting Mac OS X with a blue status bar that goes about 75% across, then goes away to just the blue screen with a black and white cursor in the upper left corner and idles there, the cursor can be moved but thats about it.
The friend bought it new as a factory refurbished item and can't find the discs. I have used different dics with this system which I will go into later.
I've also tried a safe boot (power on hold down shift key) and it goes to the apple icon spinning gear page. Then after a few minutes it will go to a blue screen with tha Mac OS X safe boot log on screen with his user name displayed. Afyer typing in his password it will display a stripped status bar and starting boot message. Then it will go to a Blue screen with some swatches of light looking wallpaper. then after a few minutes it will go to the plane blue screen with the black and white cursor in the upper left corner and stall. at this point the cursor is frozen in its place.
I've also did a single user boot (power on while holding the command-S key) which booted to a black screen with white lettering. From here I ran the /sbin/fsck -fy command which seemed to run a few tests and at the end said The Volume n seems to be ok.
I tried to reset the PRAM by holding the command-option-p-r keys while booting untill 3 chimes
I obtained a retail Black Disc of X 10.4.2 and tried to boot while holding the c key down goes to the spinning gear. I booted while holding the option key down. That took me to a screen where i could boot from the HDD n or the disc drive that showed that it had a OS X disc in it, went to the spinning gear with either option.
I also obtained a disc set that was to have been from a G4 when it was new. the discs are gray and say iBook G4 mac OS X install discs 1,2, and 3. When booting from disc 1 I just get the spinning gear. This set also came with a Apple Hardware test disc that says G4 on it version 2.0.2. When booting from this disc it goes to a grey screen with white lettering. the first 2 lines are errors loading 2 different fonts the next 2 lines are TYPE err codes then the next line says Invalid memory access at @SRR0: 00000000 @SRR1: 00083030 then the build date and version numbers then
firmware and system date which BTW is 01/01/1904 then displays instructions for mac-boot and shut-down the next line says "release keys to continue" which I don't understand what is meant. My other question at this screen is are there other commands that I can use here. and is it not fully booting to the test utilities.
Because of the memory error message I am thinkig at this point that ther is a memory issue. the only memory is the on board 256. I have tried to add memory to the empty slot under the keyboard withthe sams results as above. Would the machine try to boot into some aspects of running with a memory problem?
I have had the machine completley apart and besides being a little dirty it looked good i.e. no liquid damage or other physical damage.
I'm hoping for some expert advice here and hope you all apprieate the extensive work and research that I have done before posting here.
Thanks in advance Mark
