I've got firewire in my B&W G3 but it doesn't run OSX.

You have no other firewire mac's to boot from? I once restored an OS X disk to another mac's drive and told the target mac to boot from that. Can you say über fast install?

Yep I see that now. Sweet. I've always wanted a paperweight.

PowerPC doesn't boot from USB. Firewire only son.

I've concluded the cd drive is broken. Gonna see if I can format a usb drive to boot the osx installer.

Right, I forgot about that. Keep in mind that it will take ALOT longer then normal permissions repair.

the no smoking sign means OS X needs to be reinstalled because some file has broke. As for the G4. Put that into target disk mode and erase the hard drive(of course taking your fil…

I'll try that when I get home. Getting to the grey screen with the blinking "?" though should get me going but maybe my install media is actually messed... I'll be trying a DVD ver…

Does holding down option/alt at boot give you the Apple boot disk selector screen? If so, does the OS X CD show up there?

Some progress.... Booted back into linux and ran my favorite command "shred /dev/hda" so now the hard drive is completely blank. Boots to a grey screen with a blinking question mar…

So I'm wanting to go back to OSX from linux on my G4 Mini but it refuses to accept boot media. I'm attempting to use a 10.4 CD (verified, should work) but despite using the "C" key…

How do I put my g4 in target disk mode? Click to expand... at boot up press and hold the T key until you see the firewire logo move around like a screen saver. You now have a $…

Press Command-V as soon as you turn on the Mac. That's verbose mode and will let you see what messages are appearing on the UNIX side of things, messages which could help diagnose …

How do I put my g4 in target disk mode?

the no smoking sign means OS X needs to be reinstalled because some file has broke. As for the G4. Put that into target disk mode and erase the hard drive(of course taking your fi…

Well my G4 is booting into some strange command prompt and I have no idea why or how to fix it. When I try to boot from a cd it just has the little spining circle thing under the a…

did you run a hardware test? i wouldn't be too worried about no chiming. my sawtooth g4 has been doing that for a long time with no ill side effects. Click to expand... My dua…

you will need the cd rom drive for the hardware test. does anything come up on the screen when you turn it on?

Thankyou for your responses. If it's not booting without a chime (assuming speakers etc are working), it indicates it's failing its startup RAM test. I've a Powerbook 12" 8…

did you run a hardware test? i wouldn't be too worried about no chiming. my sawtooth g4 has been doing that for a long time with no ill side effects. Click to expand... My dua…

If it's not booting without a chime (assuming speakers etc are working), it indicates it's failing its startup RAM test. I've a Powerbook 12" 867 which unusually has a failed onbo…

Thankyou for your response! Would I be needing my hardware test CD-Rom for this, or can it be done with regular MacOSX utilities?

This one has 2.0.

Which OS is on your 120? Newton OS 1.x is generally regarded as terrible. I sent a Newton 120 2.0 firmware to a member in the US ages ago, unfortunately if didn't survive the trip…

did you run a hardware test? i wouldn't be too worried about no chiming. my sawtooth g4 has been doing that for a long time with no ill side effects.