Titanium powerbook hard drive replacement
 

I had the hard drive go out on my G4 powerbook and decided to replace it w/ one i got off ebay, supposedly out of good powerbook with tiger installed. after installing my new/used hard drive, it boots up to the folder with ?, no OS. I can hear hard drive spinning. Old one went clankety clank. lol
The only install disc I have is tiger from an old G4 tower. When I tried to install tiger, it spins up, I get the Apple symbol, then a circle w/ a line thru it. That's it. Powerbook does have superdive.
Help

You can't use the install disc from a PowerMac G4 to install OS X on a PowerBook G4. You need to buy a valid install disc. Get a black-colored one that was sold Retail, not a gray-colored one for one specific style of computer.

Also, you don't need to buy the hard drive from a PowerBook for it to work properly in a PowerBook. That gives you a hard drive that already has been used, and you don't know how much it might have been abused. I hope it was cheap. A wiser course of action would have been to buy a new hard drive. Then you could have bought one that was larger AND faster than your old one, and it still would have been pretty cheap.

Trevor

i only paid 20 bucks for it. i bought it because the os was already loaded, supposedly. i didnt want to buy a hard AND an os. the discs i was using are black. they came with my tower.
i lost my job end of march so pinchin pennies.
ideally yes, new drive and os, but money wont allow

The discs that come with computers are colored gray. They look something like this:
http://images.craigslist.org/5V35Eb5...446d4319e5.jpg

Black discs are retail. Leopard looks like this:
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4021/4...695a3733a0.jpg

Tiger looks like this:
http://farm3.staticflickr.com/2598/4...e94b90f750.jpg

You can install black retail discs on any Mac supported by that version of OS X, whereas you usually can only install the gray discs on the Mac type and model printed on the face of the disc.

Trevor

Weren't there some black "upgrade" discs in the Tiger/Leopard era? hootowl, exactly what is printed on the discs?

Ah, good point, macosnoob. If they say 10.4 Upgrade (for example) or 10.5 "CPU Drop-in DVD", then they won't install without an existing valid installation of the previous version of OS X.

http://www.powerbookmedic.com/xcart1...de103107-1.jpg

Trevor

these arent os upgrade discs. i bought my tower new in 2002 and these are the actual install discs that came with tower. 3 in total. Mac OS X Panther, version 10.3, install disc 1, 2, 3.
i emailed seller complaining about no os but he still claims the os is on hard drive. im guessing theres another problem preventing the hard drive to communicate or be recognized?

Sure, if the install of OS X 10.4 Tiger was for another type or model of Mac than yours, it probably won't work. (Fine print: it sometimes works fine, and sometimes works partially, but both cases are unusual and cannot be counted on.)

Also, buying a hard drive with another install of OS X does not give you a valid license to OS X anyway. You would need the CDs or the DVD of OS X 10.4.x to purchase the license.

Trevor

so the os 10.3 install discs that came with tower wont work with a powerbook? theyre only meant for a tower not a laptop, correct? or is it meant for that particular tower i purchased? if i were to buy a copy of tiger, would it install on my powerbook? Highest i can go is 10.5.3, correct? tell me exactly what os i should buy for my titanium 1.5 ghz 17" powerbook model A1095.

They're only meant for that specific model of Power Mac G4, not even a different model of Power Mac G4 (i.e. a different tower) is likely to work with those discs. The gray discs are very specific to a single model.

It depends what copy of Tiger you bought. You need to buy a black-colored retail disc, and it can't be an "Upgrade" disc or a "CPU Drop-in DVD" disc, it has to be a full install retail disc.

The highest you can go is 10.5.8.

(Not to nitpick, but that's an Aluminum chassis, not Titanium. The Titanium models were older, topped out at 1.0 GHz, and only came in the 15" size.)

You should buy a (black-colored) retail version of OS X 10.4.x or 10.5.x, not an Upgrade or CPU Drop-in DVD. You could go back as far as 10.3.4 if needed, but I wouldn't--it's harder and harder to find compatible software. Probably retail 10.5.x would be the better choice for that reason.

Trevor

thanx for clarification. i always thought it was a titanium model. lol. i think it had 10.5.3 on it. ill get a retail version of discs.
would this be the only possible reason im getting that error? not a broken ribbon cable or some other hardware problem preventing hard drive to communicate?

well it turns out these are the retail discs. i was digging thru my old stuff and came across another set of install discs that were grey. these were the ones that came with tower. so i dug some more and found the retail box buried behind a couple other software boxes.(ya, very organized). so if this is retail version, why wont it install? i dont have a scanner anymore so i cant scan in discs.

Hmmmm. Right now you don't have anything that can boot your PowerBook G4. If you want, you can download an Ubuntu Linux LiveCD on a different computer, burn it to CD or DVD, then use it to boot Linux on your PowerBook. Perhaps from Ubuntu you can find out whether or not there is some hardware issue with your hard drive.

Without booting to some valid operating system, we really can't tell you whether or not you have a hardware problem with your hard drive. I've been assuming not, based on the fact that there's a simpler explanation for the problem that you're having, but I don't know that there's not also a more complicated explanation too, and a Linux LiveCD would be one way, for free, for you to find out the answer to that question.

Trevor

You don't need a scanner, just tell us everything that it says on the face of the discs, even the little tiny part number.

Trevor

If the version is 10.3 - which is known as Panther - your PowerBook G4 1.5 GHz originally shipped with 10.3.3. 10.3 is the original version of 10.3, and won't boot your PowerBook. The last commercial version of Panther is 10.3.5 - which would work, if you had that version.

ok, that makes sense. i remember loading it onto my old imac to run as my web-server, but not onto a newer machine.

here's what mine says. mac os x panther version 10.3 install disc 1
version 10.3 2z691-4585-A

so this is a retail version of panther 10.3 which is to old to load onto my powerbook. ill need version 10.3.5. correct?

could you direct me to cheapest reliable source for an old os?

eBay.

The reliability would, to some degree, depend on your luck (well, and the dependability of the respective seller) Just be sure to go after a black OS X installer disk.
Best version for you, I think, would be some version of Tiger (OS X 10.4.x), although Leopard should be OK, if you have enough RAM installed. The RAM can be upgrade, if needed. Any aluminum PowerBook (15 or 17-inch screen) can have a maximum of 2GB.

i have 2G in there now. i was afraid you were going to say ebay. lol. i'll see what i can get.
thanx for your help. i'll let you know the outcome. good or bad.

you know, i just may burn a copy of that ubuntu linux livecd on diff computer just to make sure before i spend money.
Thanx

Be sure to get the PowerPC iso for Ubuntu.
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/p...op-powerpc.iso

well i burned a copy of Ubuntu and loaded it up. when it tried to reboot screen got funny then computer froze. I turned off then rebooted and i get this after start up. http://i476.photobucket.com/albums/r...ECE4399173.jpg

re-post, sorry

ok. i reloaded it and got it to work. im on it right now. thanx a bunch! you guys are frikn genius's. now i can get off that darn pc. now i know i can get a retail copy to work too. this os is pretty cool. i like.

I want to thank everyone who helped. I located a retail copy of 10.5 and loaded it up. everything works as it should. Im going to get a new new hard drive and replace this used one now that I know everything works like it should. Thanx a bunch!

Do you have back ups? External HD would work too?

I have an old external hd I'll use to backup for now. Its painfully slow, which is why I didnt use it before. Some of my old files are on there.
I was wrong about laptop working as it should. lol. For some reason it randomly goes to sleep.