Cannot boot from a CD/DVD on Power Mac G4 MDD

[richw21]

Hello,

I have a Power Mac G4 MDD and after all these years it is in good working condition. I fired it up recently and I am trying to run Data Rescue 3 to recover some old deleted files. I cannot boot from the CD. I also tried to reboot from my OS X Tiger disk and had the same issues, not being able to boot from it.

I have tried the following to no avail:

1. Restarting while holding down the C key
2. Restarting while holding down the Option key
3. Reset PRAM and VRAM
4. I also purchased a new optical drive and nothing seems to work.

I'm currently running OS X Tiger (10.4.3)

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Rich

 

[StephanieSy]

That CD drive could be faulty. Try another drive; you did mention it was an old computer. Failing that, clean the CD.

 

[DeltaMac]

Does any CD appear on the desktop when you insert it in the drive?
As a test, I always try a music CD, and a data CD (an installer CD, or your Data Rescue CD)

 

[richw21]

That CD drive could be faulty. Try another drive; you did mention it was an old computer. Failing that, clean the CD.

I replaced the drive and it didn't help.

 

[richw21]

Does any CD appear on the desktop when you insert it in the drive?
As a test, I always try a music CD, and a data CD (an installer CD, or your Data Rescue CD)

Yes, the CDs appear on my desktop and I can open them. I tested this with a number of CDs and no issues opening them.

 

[chscag]

You're probably not going to be able to boot from the CD drive as long as it's connected via USB. Always a problem with PowerPCs. Try attaching the CD drive to a Firewire port which is faster. Not sure if your Power Mac G4 MDD has a Firewire port?

 

[Wild Hare]

Do you have a bootable external firewire drive (or sizable external USB drive) that you could install Data Rescue 3 on and then boot from that?

OR… with the CD/DVD in the drive and machine shut down, boot into Open Firmware (holding down Option and Command and the “o” and “f” keys at startup - until the Open Firmware “text screen” shows.

With the CD/DVD already in the machine (before Open Firmware startup) and after the Open Firmware prompt appears… type: "boot cd:,\\:tbxi" (exactly as shown, without the quotation marks) at the prompt and then hit enter.

 

[Amethyst1]

With the CD/DVD already in the machine (before Open Firmware startup) and after the Open Firmware prompt appears… type: "boot cd:,\\:tbxi" (exactly as shown, without the quotation marks) at the prompt and then hit enter.

I apologise for bringing this up, but dark red text on a black background (I use Dark Mode) is a bit hard to read.
If you enclose the command in "icode" tags, it'll be shown in a monospaced font, easily distinguished from normal text: boot cd:,\\:tbxi

 

[richw21]

You're probably not going to be able to boot from the CD drive as long as it's connected via USB. Always a problem with PowerPCs. Try attaching the CD drive to a Firewire port which is faster. Not sure if your Power Mac G4 MDD has a Firewire port?

Thanks much! This solved my problem of booting from another device. Appreciate it.

 

[richw21]

Do you have a bootable external firewire drive (or sizable external USB drive) that you could install Data Rescue 3 on and then boot from that?

OR… with the CD/DVD in the drive and machine shut down, boot into Open Firmware (holding down Option and Command and the “o” and “f” keys at startup - until the Open Firmware “text screen” shows.

With the CD/DVD already in the machine (before Open Firmware startup) and after the Open Firmware prompt appears… type: "boot cd:,\\:tbxi" (exactly as shown, without the quotation marks) at the prompt and then hit enter.

Thanks for the advice. I was able to boot from an external firewire drive. Problem solved!