Hiya, I think there are some knowledgeable Mac users on here so I thought I would air some problems here first.

Firstly, on Friday I went to dump some rubbish in the communal skip for our office block and spotted some Apple boxes. Further investigation bagged me 1x 17" Titanium Powerbook G4 (1.5Gb,100Gb), 1x 15" Powerbook (512Mb/80Gb) and a lovely 15" Macbook Pro (1.8Ghz Core Duo, 1Gb/80Gb). The PB G4's boot up but have display issues (probably cable related), and the 15" G4 has snapped hinges. The MBP starts up, but doesn't boot past the apple logo and rotating thing.

Obviously I really want the MBP working, I can get into single-user mode and fsck fails with "Invalid Volume Header" and "Invalid Node Structure", but I can see the files on the main volume. I have acquired some bootable OSX discs but it doesn't seem to want to boot from any of them, although they are readable in the other machines (but not bootable, presumably because they are x86?). The DVD spins up, seeks around but doesn't do anything. With no hard drive plugged in I just get a grey screen and the DVD drive seeks repeatedly with an OSX DVD loaded. I am not sure how to check whether a DVD can be mounted in single-user mode, and haven't had any luck with various commands.

I have also tried booting off an IDE DVD drive using a USB adapter with no luck. I have plugged the SATA drive into my PC and it appears to be in working order - SMART reports 47 reallocated sectors though.

Sooo.. I think my possible options are:

- Find a firewire cable and use a Powerbook G4 in "target" mode (the 17" has a firewire port, but the superdrive appears to be dead, hopefully I can use the one from the 15"). I have a firewire cable here, but I thought "I'll never use it" and stored it in a "safe place". I can get another one easily though.

- Buy a firewire > IDE adapter to try and boot the DVD from an IDE DVD drive.

- Somehow burn the OSX DVD image to a hard drive, however it seems it needs to be in a GUID partition scheme, which is not an option on the disk utility on the G4!

Whew! Well, any suggestions are welcome, I'd love to get this going myself, it seems to be "almost there".

Wow, I wish people around here through out broken apple hardware. Any of those would sell for $500+ on ebay.

The main thing to know is that the intel macs won't install from just any OSX CD, it has to be the restore CD that came with that model. I'm not sure how specific they are, but a mac mini DVD set won't work in a macbook. If you could some how come into a Leopard DVD, you might have more luck, as that's going to have to support everything.

Target disk mode should work just fine, the boot options on modern macs are amazing. You should be able to boot it off the DVD of the powerbook using target disk mode, and you can install to an external drive and use that as your main boot disk. (Heck, you could install OSX back onto the powerbook's HD at the same time... the powerbook would stop booting, unfortunately)

Matthew

You are holding down C during boot to force a boot from the CD, right? (I think that's the right key...)

Hugo

Yes, I've tried all combinations of holding C, D, Option etc. and none get any further than spinning the disk up. I even tried an original OS9 CD I had kicking around here.

I am in NYC this week so it's having a rest, but I will find a firewire cable and swop the good superdrive from the 15" G4 to the 17" and see if I can boot off that.

I am back and had a further play with the MBP. I tried swapping some drives around, and found that the DVD drive is working fine, then a tried an Ubuntu live CD and it booted fine (I should have tried that first!). I am watching a few original sets of OSX on ebay and I'll get one, and I am making sure to get the correct set, ie. Intel MacBook Pro!

Contact an Apple Reseller in your area, they can order the discs needed. They shouldn't have a problem doing this if you show them you have the system, and price should be pretty cheep since in effect the license was paid for when the hardware was bought.