Cannot find destination disk upon reboot

[bwrob]

Hello,
My 12" 867Ghz, 40G, 786Ram powerbook stopped starting up. After over 5 faithful years it finally hit a snag. Upon start up, I have been getting a grey screen, the apple logo and the whirly startup thing for a few minutes then the screen would go very dark grey and I could still see the mouse for some reason. After repeated attempts to start up the computer and the same thing happening, I then attempted to reinstall by starting up while pressing c and the install disk. I got to the installer utility and proceeded to start installation, picking english, etc. I get through the introduction, read me, license portions of the install, then when I get to "select a destination" no disk appears to select. Does this indicate the hard-drive of my powerbook is broken and not the logic board? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!

 

[robinci]

Well, as far as I know, the grey Apple logo is displayed by BootX (the OS X bootloader), which is located on the hard disk.

This would of course imply that at least the disk sectors where BootX is located can be read by OpenFirmware (which loads the bootloader code and hands over control to it).

Please try to start the PowerBook while holding down the command and V keys (cmd + V). This should display some information on what's going on.

Another thing to try: what happens if you start the machine with the alt key held down?

 

[toolbox]

It might indicate that the hdd is defective, can you boot of your OSX cd and run a verify disk? See if that finds anything?

Also might be worth pulling out the ram at the back of the unit and cleaning the gold contacts on the ram and motherboard. THis past week at work i have had 2 macbooks come in with a "white substance" on the gold contacts which have been causing the boot to hang at the apple logo or to have a slow boot