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Now, what's going on with this iBook G4?

davidg5678

Well-known member
Think this would work? Naturally I'm looking to do things as cheaply as possible :)
Unfortunately, it would not work. This is a SATA SSD which is incompatible with the iBook G3. An adapter to make this drive fit would be too large for a laptop. The parts I linked retain the proper connectors for IDE, and they will fit inside your computer correctly. The SSD link I sent was for a 120GB drive, but you could get a 32GB drive for $5 or $6 dollars less. It would probably still be bigger than whatever failed inside the iBook.

Alternatively, you could try this product: https://www.amazon.com/Optimal-Shop-Digital-Adapter-Converter/dp/B00DGNYXQ0/ref=pd_sbs_147_3/139-7974699-0572325?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=B00DGNYXQ0&pd_rd_r=d6bb5943-9566-4c9b-9aa7-aa8a2dda24ea&pd_rd_w=WPtGc&pd_rd_wg=kid4W&pf_rd_p=ed1e2146-ecfe-435e-b3b5-d79fa072fd58&pf_rd_r=89M39EJEGJEH7JZNMZBZ&psc=1&refRID=89M39EJEGJEH7JZNMZBZ

It looks like it will fit you computer, and it is a SD card to laptop IDE converter for $12. A 64GB SD card would run you another $10, putting this in the same price range as the drive you linked. I have not seen as many people use it as the other products, but there are some reviews where people said that it worked in their iBooks. I wish I had found this product before spending twice as much money on the other kind of drives. :)

 

Franklinstein

Well-known member
I actually used one of the little M.2 SSDs on an IDE adapter in my iBook G3. The adapter itself was about $10. The whole assembly is about the same height and half the length of a standard 2.5" hard drive. I used some double-stick tape to hold it in place after it was reconnected to the ATA cable (you can't reuse any of the original hard drive mounts with one of these adapters). 

To try to rule out major iBook problems, see if you can find an external FW disk drive and install the OS to that (just delete the internal drive's partitions in Drive Setup and ignore it). If it works, you probably need a new internal hard drive. If you get the same errors, you may have larger problems with the iBook than just a failing drive.

 

CircuitBored

Well-known member
Have you ruled out memory problems? I had a desktop G4 that was behaving eerily similarly to your iBook and nothing short of switching out the RAM sorted it out. I've never encountered the "just the desktop background" freeze on a machine that didn't have faulty RAM. 

 

Sludgedragon

Well-known member
I tried starting it up in Safe mode, and it got to the gray screen with the apple and just stayed there.

I tried removing the additional RAM and starting it  up, and it got to the gray screen with the apple and just stayed there.

This may be a clue, on a couple of my repeated tries to install from a disk in the optical drive it looked weird and pixelated. Probably should have included a picture before. Funny thing is, other than appearance, it acted like it was installing.

IMG_0567.JPG

 

Daniël

Well-known member
What OS X installer is this? I know that's what the OS X 10.3 installer looked like when I tried to boot it on a Quad G5 for fun, as that particular G5 doesn't support it.

 

Sludgedragon

Well-known member
I think that was 10.5, but it also did it with a downloaded copy of 10.4, both when in the disk drive. I have also tried installing with another iBook G4 I just got which is working fine. I also tried it in target disk mode using a 2008 iMac. What's weird is that it looked like that but otherwise proceeded as a normal install. (Except, of course, that I still had that same startup issue when it was all done!) When running disk utility it tests out that all the things it checks are OK. This is weird.

I am beginning to think that this thing is going to be an organ donor at best! :p

 

onabeach

Active member
Having the same problem with my iBook G3 800Mhz. When I got it, it booted fine to 10.4 Tiger. Even got it connected to the internet and Apple updated it to 10.4.11. If it's not broke don't fixit it right? But it didn't have the classic environment. Tried loading os9 with no success. Then reloaded the software with the 4 software install disks, and the problem that the OP describes occurred. Could boot with the os9 disk though.

Changed out (iFixit) the HD with a Samsung HM160HC 160 GB 5400RPM 2.5" IDE, ATA, PATA Laptop Notebook Hard Drive from eBay $14. Very quiet and fast but runs hot. Partitioned the drive into 2 sections and loaded os9 using the os9 install disk into one partition. Boots up fine and fast but the desktop is not filling up the screen. But when I tried to get OS X onto the other partition I have the same problem as described above.

Any more ideas we can try?

 

EvilCapitalist

Well-known member
Did the machine comes with the restore discs you were using or were you using images you found online?  I see the Garden now has a load more restore discs preserved and the set below should work for you (assuming these aren't the same ones you already tried):

http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/ibook-g3-early-2003-software-media-set-mac-os-v922-mac-os-x1024

I know when I tried to use a retail 9.1 CD on one of my iBooks (G3/600) it would boot fine from the CD and install without any complaints but it also didn't recognize the GPU or sound properly for some reason.  All was well when I got the machine-specific restore disc set though.

 

onabeach

Active member
Yes I went to the Garden and found what looks like copies of the restore disks that I need for my iBook model. I thought they would be disk images I could just use to burn a set of CDs that would be an exact copy of the originals. But the files ended up being PKG files on my MacBook Pro, and it does not look easy to burn a set of CDs from them. Why is that? DRM? There are procedures using virtual programs, Terminal, etc but there must be an easy way to duplicate a disk, bit by bit, regardless of the OS.

 

onabeach

Active member
Also it looks like Apple deleted the ability to burn disks in its Disk Repair utility in recent OSX updates. I cannot find a way to burn a CD once I get the proper software restore disk images. What can we use now to burn disks?

 

Michael_b

Well-known member
Haven't tried it but maybe Burn would do the trick?

Re: the files ending up as .pkg files on your Macbook Pro - perhaps Safari is automatically extracting the disk images and showing you the .pkg files contained within? Not sure what files from Macintosh Garden you are using.

Also, it should be possible to boot from USB on this iBook using Open Firmware. It isn't the most user friendly process, but I definitely prefer booting from USB to making install CDs.

 

CircuitBored

Well-known member
Got another Mac with FireWire and some

free disk space?
 

My preferred method of installing old OSX versions is to copy the installer to a secondary disk/partition on another Mac then use FireWire and target disk mode to boot the Mac I want to install on. It's far, far faster than relying on optical media. 

 
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