G4 Acting up in OSX Jaguar

[Daedalus256]

Well tonight I got my new G4 in the mail. It's in pretty good shape and has 512 megs of ram and a nice plexwriter in it. So It's running OS9, that can be remedied! I try to install OSX to no avail. Turns out it needed a firmware update. OK! No problem. I update to 9.1, run the firmware update and go to install OSX. Panther does something wonky so I try jaguar. Jaguar installs but halfway between doing the registration stuff, everything fades away and the loading circle appears.

Zuh?

I hit the restart button and get through the setup this time. I'm in Jaguar and then it does the same thing. Except now I have a black screen with this on it:

Darwin/BSD (My computers name.local.) (console)

Login:


Uh...what is this?

 

[Daedalus256]

oh dear. I think my problems are just beginning.

This powermac has this problem where if I don't press the PMU reset button after I shut it down, it doesn't boot back up. I gets to the white apple screen and then a bunch of garbled crap comes on the screen. I've tried many sticks of RAM, one by one, etc to no avail.

Does this sound like a bad logic board?

 

[Daedalus256]

Alright well this thing is fixed. Figured I'd just give everyone a heads up on how it got fixed.

I had all these problems and a possibly bad logic board. I tried two PMU batteries in it (not knowing their charge) and well, I was stumped.

I consulted another forum and got the idea from a fellow member to try out a new PMU battery, a fresh one. So I bit the bullet and spent $15 at Radioshack for a new battery. Sure enough! It fixed basically every problem I had with this computer.

 

[jhu]

see? i told you it would work.

 

[Eidorian]

Maybe I should have replaced that Power Mac's battery. Too late now, it's canibalized and salvaged. *sob*