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A cry for help!!

Avatar Paul Jeram
We have had an old Powerbook G4 kicking around at work which everyone has said was broken. (sadly we a PC based company and none of the tecchies understand Macs)

Having taken it home to fix the Powerbook boots but then asks for a password to to log on. Nobody knows what the password is. I have tried booting from an OSX disk but the CD/DVD drive is broken and it will not boot from this so I cannot reset the password this way.

It will boot into target mode and I can mount it as an external firewire drive on my iMac or Macbook.

Any ideas how I can fix this Powerbook as its too good to bin. I don't need to recover anything off it just reinstall the OS.

Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.
Paul

Re: A cry for help!!

Avatar Terry Willis
Boot it in Target Disk Mode on your iMac and install OSX on it from there. When the install restarts the iMac, it will give you the option of installing on the Target Disks HDD. Alternately, use an external DVD drive.

Re: A cry for help!!

Avatar Paul Jeram
Thanks Terry, just to clarify boot the G4 into Target Disk Mode so it mounts on the iMac as an external drive. Then run the install

Re: A cry for help!!

Avatar Mick Burrell
Hopefully this will clarify what Terry has said:

1) Boot the laptop in target disk mode while connected to the iMac and make sure the iMac can see it.
2) Put the install DVD into the iMac and reboot
3) When the installer starts it will allow you to select which drive you want to install on - in your case the drive in the laptop.

Terry's alternative of using an external DVD drive attached to the laptop would also work.

Re: A cry for help!!

Avatar Paul Jeram
Thanks Mick. Much appreciated. I will try again this eveing.

Re: A cry for help!!

Avatar Drew McFarlane
I wonder what the outcome of this was?

Re: A cry for help!!

Avatar Mick Burrell
Blimey Drew - you were trawling back through the archives to find this!
 
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