Powerbook G4 Problem

I've recently come into possession of a powerbook g4, and I don't have much of an idea of what to do.

It's one of those "you fix it, you can have it". I really need this, because I'm at college, and I need a laptop, and I can't really afford one.

The thing that happens is, after I hit the power button, it turns on, and a question mark / sad finder flashes in the middle constantly.

I was going to try putting in the Snow Leopard, but I realize it's wasteful because it won't install on PPC machines. So I put in the Leopard DVD, but it's an upgrade DVD, and it can't detect an older version. Past that, I put in the Tiger DVD, and whenever I load from DVD, it just crashes, and says to restart.

Any suggestions, or anyone know what that flashing icon means?

Thanks in advance.

So how do I change the hard drive?

Thank you so much by the way.

I have no idea what model this powerbook is. How can I find out? They all look the same to me.

I looked at how to install a harddrive, and I don't want to do anything near what that guide wants me to do.

If I take it to an apple store, would they do it for me? If so, how much would they do it for?

It's 3-4 years old. I'll be at college tomorrow, which is close to an Apple store, so I'll try to visit and see what happens.

First I'm going to try to get a different DVD and install Tiger, or even Panther, I just want to get the thing working.

Alright, I managed to install Leopard onto it, after a long morning.

I found the exact model and serial number and all, and found out all the specs. Where can I get some more RAM for this, anywhere that can be found for cheap? I went on a site and it said it was $60 for just 1 GB. I'd also like to get a new battery. The battery lasts for 20 minutes when unplugged.

According to ifixit, I have the 1.5 GHz (BT 2.0) Aluminum 15"

Pretty much this



Except mine doesn't look like trash ;P

Anyway, so I got all the software fine, but sometimes the powerbook will just completely freeze. It's frozen a bunch of times, and a couple times when I was updating. It always worries me when something is frozen while updating.

Is it a heating problem and can i use a cooling pad or is the whole laptop just not worth trying to fix

stock ram and hard drive.

512 MB RAM, and 80 GB HD.

I can't really afford to put in more RAM, that type of RAM is so expensive. PC-2700 DDR333

Alright, well, now the computer runs fine, until you get around into 15 minutes of using the laptop. then it just freezes, and I have to restart.

I don't have original anything. All I got was the powerbook and the charger cable with adapter. is there any other way I can run the apple hardware test?

i've decided to take the powerbook to an apple store, but before i do that, i'd like to know if there is an apple hardware test software that i could download. i tried googling, but i haven't found anything i could download.

just things that say put your restore dvd into the drive, which i don't have.