Emac hard drive replacement and CRt fear

[comda]

Greetings!

I have an emac G4 that i purchased some months ago that had trouble booting tiger. The owner said he knows the drive isnt dead or failing. I bought it formatted it and installed Leopard. About 2 months ago the drive stopped spinning while in use and you guys as well as myself confirmed its the hard drive.

Being that the machine is that supposed "rare" 1.42Ghz model I want to replace the drive. Im used to working with the Imac G3's are the CRt and the motherboard are separated but here its all one big piece.

the Combo drive also has trouble opening at times unless it lift the emac and drop it from about 1cm height.

What I want to know is how can i go about replacing this hard drive without injury due to the CRT? Will a month of sitting be enough to discharge it? and is there anything i can do to fix the COmbo drive? let me know.. As i would love to get this beast back up and going. its config is the following

1.42Ghz Power PC G4
1Gb RAm
80 GB hard drive Seagate
Combo Drive
Wireless airport card.

 

[Intell]

The 1.42Ghz eMacs aren't that rare. They were sold for a similar time span as any other eMac model. My nifty 1.5Ghz eMac is slightly more rare.

Yes, the CRT can kill you. Just go slowly and don't prod anything that you shouldn't or need to. Even after sitting for a month, they can still carry a charge strong enough to stop a heart. Discharging them can be scary, but makes them very safe to work on. If you feel uncomfortable discharging it, you can still work on it. Stay away from the CRT circuitry and you'll be good.

You can replace the optical drive with any standard desktop PATA/IDE optical drive. If you have a DVD burner, that can be used as well. In your eMac, it does not matter much about jumper positions as both the hard drive and optical drive are on their own PATA bus and will not conflict with each other.

 

[comda]

Ok. I did it. I actually took the thing apart. And there is a 1.5ghz? wow. I didnt know that either lol. Someone on the forum here told me the 1.42ghz is a little harder to find. Anyways. Ive heard that replacing the optical drive from the original will cause issues with Idvd. Is that correct?

 

[Intell]

It will only cause problems with older versions of iDVD. Not a problem in your case as you currently don't have the ability to burn DVDs. The 1.5Ghz model is a slightly tweaked 1.25Ghz model.

 

[comda]

well. I have a DVD-RW that i can swap in. Its an IDE drive that i have from my old PC and it works I also do have ilife that i might want to install. and as to your model. I see. Mac Tracker doesnt even have this model.

 

[Intell]

It's a custom tweak. Purely end user done.

 

[LightBulbFun]

It's a custom tweak. Purely end user done.

Haha, Iv alwas wanted a 1.42Ghz eMac as I like CRTs and there the most powerfull CRT mac and seport core image thanks to the R9600 sadly there quite rare here Atleast I have my OS 9.2.2 Booting FW800 dual 1.42GHz
PMG4 MDD

@comda
regarding the CRT Just stay well away from the Red flying lead comming from the CRT and stay away from the stuff surrounding the flying lead gose into (aka the flyback etc)

 

[comda]

i see. well after all the work i managed to replace the hard drive and the DVD drive with a pioneer DVD-RW. i know the drive worked as i had it in my P4 Hacintosh before the board died. BUt it doesnt seem to work. Is there a jumper i need to set to master or slave?

 

[Intell]

As I stated above, jumpers don't matter on your model eMac. Both drives have their own buses.

 

[comda]

does the emac usually fuss about what drives it likes and possible models it doesnt?

 

[Intell]

eMacs are not picky about their drives.

 

[comda]

Then i guess this drive must have died. It wont read my Leopard or tiger disk. But my external BenQ DVD drive will open it on the Emac. Thanks for the help guys! Guess i gotta crack open this machine once more!