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Found an eMac

F

flatFork

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 1, 2008
2
0
I found an eMac in a pile of trash the other day. It doesn't work. Its a G4 1.25GHz 256MB RAM model that shipped w/OS 10.3 as best I can tell.

When I try to start it up, all I get is the light grey screen/dark grey logo & a dark grey spinny progress indicator thing. It wont start normally or in Safe Mode. I ran TechTool on it via the disc that came with another Mac, & all the hardware seems fine. I don't have the install/restore disc for it.

Anybody got suggestions as to getting it working/what to do with it/how to turn it into a fishbowl?

Thanks.
 
If it boots from the CD and tests OK, then there is either something wrong with the hard drive, or with the OS installation on the hard drive.

You need to get yourself a set of OSX disks, either the bundled disks that came with this model, or a retail Panther or Tiger set -- then try erasing the drive and reinstalling the OS.

If that fails, you could try putting in a new hard drive (IDE 3.5" drive)
 
Quickest way would to be to try and boot off a OS installer disk. I'm quessing though you don't have any or you would have already tried this. You could try and track down 10.3 discs, they are getting cheap nowadays.

If you have another mac nearby running osx 10.3 or 10.4 you could set that machine in target disk mode and hook it up to the emac via firewire and then try to get the emac to boot off of the other systems drive. Or as the post above, swap the drive.
 
Aren't the installer discs proprietary to the machines they ship with (i.e. you can't use the disc from a MacBook on a Mac Mini) or will any 10.3 install disc do?
 
Finding RAM is a PIA if it isn't a DDR machine, got the last stick at CompUSA before they declared the liquidation sale.
 
Sun Baked said:
Finding RAM is a PIA if it isn't a DDR machine, got the last stick at CompUSA before they declared the liquidation sale.
Click to expand...

DDR? RAM?

ddrmachine027_screen.jpg


VS

20050828-2272%20Ram%20Leofoo%20Village.jpg
 
flatFork said:
Aren't the installer discs proprietary to the machines they ship with (i.e. you can't use the disc from a MacBook on a Mac Mini) or will any 10.3 install disc do?
Click to expand...

OSX disks, either the bundled disks that came with this model, or a retail Panther or Tiger set
Click to expand...

^ You cannot use an install dissk from a machine that is of a different model line/generation. There is a very limited and somewhat random ability to use disks from other machines of the same generation where the hardware is sufficiently similar, but I wouldn't count on that.

SunBaked -- while it may be a pain to find the PC133 DIMMs at a bigbox outlet, they are readily available from any Mac-centric memory dealer.
 
You can boot it in Firewire Target Disk Mode and run the installer from another Mac. If using Tiger (10.4) the other machine would need to be PPC.

Also you can install to an external drive on another computer, then move that drive over to the eMac.

Make sure to buy a legal copy when you have verified it is a good runner.
 
ADent said:
You can boot it in Firewire Target Disk Mode and run the installer from another Mac. If using Tiger (10.4) the other machine would need to be PPC.

Also you can install to an external drive on another computer, then move that drive over to the eMac.

Make sure to buy a legal copy when you have verified it is a good runner.
Click to expand...

also leopard
 
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