Good PB A1104 restore disc download (dare I say torrent?)

[Tannerman917]

Hi all,

I'm looking to find a good restore disc download for an old (non-operational) Alumin(i)um 12" PowerBook my friend gave to me. It's my first Mac, but I'm not afraid to mess with hardware or software. It will turn on, but it gets no farther than the logo and just sits there. I pulled the keyboard off to try and access the logic board reset button, but it doesn't have one. It then booted once to a gray screen with a flashing Finder/? overlayed on a folder. I have a friend who is well versed in Macs, and he said that the problem might be that the HDD is corrupted and that it needs a restore. I don't want to put any money into a machine this old (the body's kinda in rough shape and the battery's shot), but if I can get it to run just to mess around with and tether to my desk, I'd be really happy. Thanks for putting up with this long post, and I certainly appreciate the inevitable help, since you PPC folks are as good as the classic Porschephiles (which is to say, committed and knowledgeable)!

May my PB live again!

 

[eyoungren]

You need an OS. Not necessarily a restore disk, although the restore disks have the original OS on them. Leopard was the last version of OSX (10.5) that these Macs can use. 10.6 and above requires an Intel Mac.

While it's possible that the OS is corrupted, I'd suspect the hard drive. Replacing the hard drive is rather involved. I've replaced the one on my wife's 12" PowerBook and space inside these Macs is considerably tight.

You might want to look up how to reset the PMU for the 12" PowerBook. It does not use a reset button under the keyboard as you've discovered.

Note that in your search for a copy of PowerPC Leopard 10.5 (should you decide to look for one) a dual layer superdrive is a valuable tool.

 

[Lil Chillbil]

Hi all,

I'm looking to find a good restore disc download for an old (non-operational) Alumin(i)um 12" PowerBook my friend gave to me. It's my first Mac, but I'm not afraid to mess with hardware or software. It will turn on, but it gets no farther than the logo and just sits there. I pulled the keyboard off to try and access the logic board reset button, but it doesn't have one. It then booted once to a gray screen with a flashing Finder/? overlayed on a folder. I have a friend who is well versed in Macs, and he said that the problem might be that the HDD is corrupted and that it needs a restore. I don't want to put any money into a machine this old (the body's kinda in rough shape and the battery's shot), but if I can get it to run just to mess around with and tether to my desk, I'd be really happy. Thanks for putting up with this long post, and I certainly appreciate the inevitable help, since you PPC folks are as good as the classic Porschephiles (which is to say, committed and knowledgeable)!

May my PB live again!

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