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G4 Cube all in a mess

B

bluedogz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 21, 2010
29
0
Havre de Grace, MD
Good afternoon-

Picked up a G4 Cube at a garage sale a couple years ago, let my basement tenant use it for email/web for a year, then it sat on the desk in my (now vacant) rental apt. for a year. I'm preparing to sell it so I figured it would be wise to wipe the drive entirely and install 10.5 so that the buyer would be able to start clean.

Slid in my Leopard install DVD (which is still in my Mac toolbox for reasons I don't know), and attempted to boot from DVD to nuke/pave/reinstall. However, now I am getting consistent kernel panics on all restarts- either from CD or not. Even Cmd-Opt-F-O does nothing.

I attempted to even find the manual eject on the drive, but can't figure out how to remove enough rear panels to get at it.

So:
1) any ideas on a force-eject?
2) any ideas on clean-installing OS X?
 
666sheep

666sheep

macrumors 68040
Dec 7, 2009
3,686
291
Poland
1. hold LMB right after powering Cube on – if DVD isn't broken, it will eject disc
2. It's more complicated, if you want to install 10.5. It depends on specs of your Cube. You cannot install 10.5 on stock one with 450/500 CPU and ATI Rage. It would require at least GF2MX. Other limitations as 867 MHz and RAM you could bypass using few tricks.
 
B

bluedogz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 21, 2010
29
0
Havre de Grace, MD
666sheep said:
1. hold LMB right after powering Cube on – if DVD isn't broken, it will eject disc
2. It's more complicated, if you want to install 10.5. It depends on specs of your Cube. You cannot install 10.5 on stock one with 450/500 CPU and ATI Rage. It would require at least GF2MX. Other limitations as 867 MHz and RAM you could bypass using few tricks.
Click to expand...

Allow me the stupid question- what's the LMB?
 
A

AtmChm

macrumors regular
Jul 6, 2010
138
0
WI
Here are some helps from the MacRumors guide for a stuck disk:

"Restart the computer while holding down Command-Option-O-F, to enter the Open Firmware prompt. Type "eject cd" without the quotes, and press return. The disk ought to eject. To start into OS X, type "mac-boot" without the quotes. Press return, and the computer will continue with the startup. (This will not work on an Intel Mac. There is no Open Firmware on Intel Macs. )

"If your computer has an eject button on the keyboard, restart the computer holding down the Option key. When the startup disk selection screen appears, let go of the option key and press the keyboard's eject button.
Shut down the computer, turn it back on, and let it sit for 10-15 minutes. Make sure the power cord is plugged in and the disc just might pop out on its own."

If those don't work, you may have to take the core out and somewhat disassemble to get the disk out manually. You'll need a T-10 torx screwdriver to do the disassembly.

As 666sheep said, you can't put 10.5 on a stock cube, so unless the processor has been upgraded to 867 MHz or faster, you won't be able to install 10.5 without some firmware tricks. But you really don't want to do that, as 10.5 on a stock cube will be painfully slow. The latest OS you will be able to (and will want to) install is 10.4.
 
B

bluedogz

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 21, 2010
29
0
Havre de Grace, MD
AtmChm said:
Here are some helps from the MacRumors guide for a stuck disk:

"Restart the computer while holding down Command-Option-O-F, to enter the Open Firmware prompt. Type "eject cd" without the quotes, and press return. The disk ought to eject. To start into OS X, type "mac-boot" without the quotes. Press return, and the computer will continue with the startup. (This will not work on an Intel Mac. There is no Open Firmware on Intel Macs. )

"If your computer has an eject button on the keyboard, restart the computer holding down the Option key. When the startup disk selection screen appears, let go of the option key and press the keyboard's eject button.
Shut down the computer, turn it back on, and let it sit for 10-15 minutes. Make sure the power cord is plugged in and the disc just might pop out on its own."

If those don't work, you may have to take the core out and somewhat disassemble to get the disk out manually. You'll need a T-10 torx screwdriver to do the disassembly.

As 666sheep said, you can't put 10.5 on a stock cube, so unless the processor has been upgraded to 867 MHz or faster, you won't be able to install 10.5 without some firmware tricks. But you really don't want to do that, as 10.5 on a stock cube will be painfully slow. The latest OS you will be able to (and will want to) install is 10.4.
Click to expand...

Thank you, everyone... the odd issue here is that the kernel panic screen appears BEFORE any of these can work... LMB does nothing, CMd-Opt-O-F does nothing- Kernael panic screen appear IMMEDIATELY. I have a T-10, but even removing the 4 obvious T-10 screws did not give me access to the manual eject on the back of the drive. It seems I'd need to pry loose some panels and I was hesitant to do that without a manual.

Oh, yeah- I am using an ancient Apple keyboard that has no eject button.

At this point, I'm prepared to just say heck with it and leave the tenant's stuff the way it was. Still need to get the DVD out, though.
 
A

AtmChm

macrumors regular
Jul 6, 2010
138
0
WI
bluedogz said:
Thank you, everyone... the odd issue here is that the kernel panic screen appears BEFORE any of these can work... LMB does nothing, CMd-Opt-O-F does nothing- Kernael panic screen appear IMMEDIATELY. I have a T-10, but even removing the 4 obvious T-10 screws did not give me access to the manual eject on the back of the drive. It seems I'd need to pry loose some panels and I was hesitant to do that without a manual.

Oh, yeah- I am using an ancient Apple keyboard that has no eject button.

At this point, I'm prepared to just say heck with it and leave the tenant's stuff the way it was. Still need to get the DVD out, though.
Click to expand...
If you are getting the kernel panic before even getting to open firmware, then there must be a more basic hardware problem going on. It's not the install DVD.

Once you get the core out, there are 4 torx screws at the corners to remove, and 4 more on the sides before you can lift the top frame off. Then you need to remove 4 more torx screws on the sids of the CD/DVD that hold it in place. Those are also T-10 screws. Once the CD/DVD drive is loose you will be able to slide it up and then disconnect the power cable and the IDE connector. The drive will then slide all the way out.
 
Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
18,955
509
Inside
The manual eject button on a Cube's optical drive is on the right side of the disc slot. Use a paperclip to push the little button. As long as the drive has power and isn't jammed, it'll eject the disc.
 
R

redrum69

macrumors newbie
Jul 9, 2011
7
0
Kali
On my Cubes I stick to Tiger 10.4.11 being the best with at least 1gig of
RAM although I always run 1.5G.
the eject is notoriously sticky it helps if your drive is clean.
 
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