Finally, a Mac Mini!

[Franklinstein]

Forget it, Jake. It's eBay.

 

[CC_333]

I have a genuine Leopard DVD?

PM me about it if you want?

c

 

[LazarusNine]

Be aware the G4 Mini with the Radeon 9200 has a 135Mhz pixel clock limit over the TMDS encoder for digital displays. Something to do with if the display is coherent or non-coherent.

I ran into this issue a few times with later 1080p TV's.

You just won't get any picture out of them at all if you exceed the 135Mhz pixel clock, however lowering the resolution to 720p works, and you can also monkey around with the settings in SwitchResX.

Unfortunately, display manufactures don't really list if a display is coherent or non-coherent, so it can be luck of the draw for higher res displays.

A good display we know works is I think the 23" Apple DVI LCD made and sold around the time the G4 Mini was new. Other newer higher res single link DVI displays may, or may not work.

This was the first I’d read about this and I’ve had the very issue you describe with my G4 1.25GHz Mini. On one 1080p monitor, it works fine, but when set to 1080p plugged into my 4K monitor, there’s no image. I have to VNC in, remotely change the settings to something (anything) lower than 1080p and then I’m back in business. Thanks for explaining this issue and ending my frustration at the mystery.

 

[Juliet Elysa]

Hi all! Sorry about the lack of updates. My back is going bad again, making it very difficult to sit in a chair to use the Mini the way it's set up. A few weeks ago I bought a legit DVD from a fellow forum member (thank you again! ), and yesterday I finally was able to sit long enough to test it. It took the Mac two or three minutes to get to the point where it would look for a startup disc, which took an additional 30 seconds or so of the ? folder flashing before it recognized the DVD. It went to the Apple logo screen and displayed the spinning loading symbol thing (it's late and words are failing me ), where it sat for another minute before... a prohibitory sign! Rejected! That's roughly what I was expecting to happen considering that there have been no hard drive sounds, but I was hoping I'd at least get a proper Welcome screen or something more exciting.

This is leading me to suspect a complete hard drive failure, though stiction issues are still in the realm of possibility. Any other thoughts or suggestions? Also, how do you get the Mac to eject a valid startup disc instead of trying to boot from it? I used to know this but it's escaped me...  :lol:

 

[CC_333]

I wonder... if the drive has failed, I may have a spare you can have, if you want it? I can even put Leopard on it for you!

I don't see how a bad hard drive would prevent Mac OS X from booting from a DVD, though.

If you have another Mac with Firewire (anything will do, but a late G3 or G4 running Tiger or Leopard would be best), try booting it to target disk mode and see what happens? I'm not sure if this was already suggested or not...

c

 

[nglevin]

I am a little suspicious that something else might be foul if you can't boot into the DVD, either.

You might have to hold down the "C" key on the keyboard while starting it up to boot from a CD or DVD. IIRC the hard drive always has priority over the CD/DVD unless you do that. That might just work.

 

[CC_333]

Yes, it does seem like it's trying to boot from a faulty hard drive or something, unless you specifically hear lots of optical drive activity while this happens? You can't necessarily hear the hard drive unless you listen very closely.

Try doing as nglevin suggests and see if that helps.

c

 

[Juliet Elysa]

The C key didn't work either, sadly. Which is making me suspicious too that something else is acting up. What other component failures would allow the computer to boot enough to recognize a startup disc but prevent it from going farther than the Apple logo?

 

[CC_333]

Can you make it into the Open Firmware prompt? The key combo for that is Command+Option+O+F.

Once there, you should issue these three commands, pressing enter each time:

0k>set-defaults <press enter>

0k>reset-nvram <press enter>

0k>reset-all <press enter>

Then hold down Command+Option+P+R to reset PRAM.

If that doesn't clear things up, maybe there's something else going on?

c

 

[Juliet Elysa]

Well, that was a big cup of nope! It didn't go into the Open Firmware prompt, and it didn't reset the PRAM either (assuming that the repeated startup sound is still the confirmation that the reset happened?). There's always the possibility that I just suck at Mac combos after primarily using Windows for so long, but now I'm wondering if something keyboard or USB related is going on since it doesn't appear to be acknowledging any keyboard commands. The mini does seem to recognize the keyboard (the Caps Lock light flashes during startup and can be turned on and off after), and it's an original Apple keyboard from 2005 that I've been using as my main computer's keyboard for months now so there's no question that it works and is compatible with the mini.

At least this project should keep me occupied for a while!

 

[nglevin]

Try holding down “option” (or “alt” on a standard PC keyboard) to boot into Startup Manager, per this tip; https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-4672

My PowerBook G4 supports booting from a CD or DVD with the “c” key, but it seems the Mac Mini G4 might be too new for that.