Help, frustrated with G4 mac mini

[mykrowyre]

I have a few powerbooks, 2 macbooks, and I decided to purchase my 9yr old daughter and older G4 1.42ghz mac mini for her birthday. I was thinking that it was 1) cheap, 2) unlikely get trojans or viruses being a g4, and 3) reliable, as it's a mac 🙂

It arrived with Leopard installed... I backed up to my Time Capsule, but it was sooo slow. I upgraded to 2GB of ram. Still... too slow to use. So I installed Panther from the original install disks. Problem is, I am having issues with Panther because it does not recognize the new aluminum keyboards. Panther works for the most part, but I cannot connect to my time capsule as there is no time machine in panther. I can't boot from CD because it does not recognize the keyboard until after boot. I can't use the volume controls because they are mapped differently.

I've also recently had problems with the beach ball of death and have not determined the cause. Seems to be after a sleep, especially when in iTunes (I have a sleep playlist for my daughter). In the morning the machine wakes up but does right into beach ball of death.

So I would like to upgrade to tiger. I think tiger will run on it ok, but the problem is, I can't find it anywhere for the mac mini G4! It's on amazon for $300 (which is just stupid)!!!

Amy ideas? I am a huge mac fan but I am feeling a bit let down at the moment. Even Apple does not appear to support the G4 anymore.

tomstock@gmail.com

 

[iBookG4user]

Unfortunately the price of older Mac OS X install discs is just ridiculous right now. Your best bet would probably be to scour craigslist and ebay until you find a good deal. However, I think you might be a bit confused for the RAM, the Mac Mini G4 has a maximum of 1GB of RAM, not 2GB.

 

[Hrududu]

It should run Leopard effortlessly. It sounds like something is wrong with it. Are you for sure its a G4? If it is, it won't even hold 2GB of RAM which is why I ask. I would almost guess its got a bad hard drive or something.

 

[mrsir2009]

Its probably a bad hard drive because:

1. Its slow and beachballs.

2. It SHOULD run Leopard fine, being a G4.

*If you still want to get Tiger for it you'll be best to borrow them from a friend or something.

 

[alust2013]

Its probably a bad hard drive because:

1. Its slow and beachballs.

2. It SHOULD run Leopard fine, being a G4.

*If you still want to get Tiger for it you'll be best to borrow them from a friend or something.

+1, definitely sounds like a HDD issue.

 

[mykrowyre]

Oops you are right, I meant 1GB. I upgraded it from 512MB. It has a single slot for ram.

Ok,well I guess I must have had the hard drive problem from the beginning then, because it had always sort of hung on the beach ball for long periods of time. I assumed it was swapping memory, but more ram didn't help much. Downgrading to panther was a HUGE improvement in speed... it is much faster than whatever was on it before, but the beach ball of death still happens.

Running a disk verify from the startup disk found no errors...

So while I agree it does seem like a hard drive issue, why no disk errors?

I'll try to find a replacement drive.

Thanks
Tom

 

[mrsir2009]

Oops you are right, I meant 1GB. I upgraded it from 512MB. It has a single slot for ram.

Ok,well I guess I must have had the hard drive problem from the beginning then, because it had always sort of hung on the beach ball for long periods of time. I assumed it was swapping memory, but more ram didn't help much. Downgrading to panther was a HUGE improvement in speed... it is much faster than whatever was on it before, but the beach ball of death still happens.

Running a disk verify from the startup disk found no errors...

So while I agree it does seem like a hard drive issue, why no disk errors?

I'll try to find a replacement drive.

Thanks
Tom

Try booting off an external drive first. Now, doing that WILL be slow (because its RUNNING off an external drive) but it shouldn't beachball or crash or anything).

If thats not a problem them you'll have to get a new hard drive 😱

 

[666sheep]

Running a disk verify from the startup disk found no errors...

So while I agree it does seem like a hard drive issue, why no disk errors?

Errors will be next. It's wearing-out mechanically. Some drives are doing it sooner, some later.