My cool Power Mac G4 find - the "sweet spot" PPC Mac

[dpfenninger]

So I was on Facebook Marketplace a few weeks back, and stumbled upon a seller getting rid of a Power Mac G4 Quicksilver, 867 MHz model, with matching 17" Apple Cinema Display (with ADC connector), for $150. I threw out a $100 offer to her and she accepted so I swung by and picked it up from her place.

The system is in immaculate condition, just a very few scuffs here and there but otherwise looks almost out-of-the-box clean. Same with the display. It even came with a built-in Zip drive under the Superdrive with the proper front bezel, but I replaced the Zip with something else that I think is cool and unique (more on that in a bit...). And as far as I can tell, everything seems to be functioning perfectly with it so far.

What intrigues me most about this particular system is that this exact 867 MHz model is the ONLY Power Mac model that is supported by every retail release of PPC Mac OS X, from 10.0 through 10.5, as well as being OS 9-bootable, without requiring a CPU upgrade. Earlier PPCs are not rated fast enough for 10.5, and later PPCs couldn't run 10.0 and/or boot OS 9 (for post-late 2003 PPCs). Even other Quicksilvers (733 Mhz and dual-800 Mhz) released in 2001 alongside this model are too slow for Leopard's CPU requirement (867 MHz and above G4).

So as a proof-of-concept, I decided to demonstrate this uniqueness... the system's existing 60 GB hard disk came with some OS 9 system stuff on it, but there was no blessed system folder and could not boot. So I went about tracking down a Mac OS 9.2.2 install CD, burned it on my 2013 iMac, and used that to boot the PMG4 and partition its internal hard drive into SEVEN partitions, one for each supported Mac OS system as follows:

6 GB for Mac OS 9
2 GB for Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah
2 GB for Mac OS X 10.1 Puma
4 GB for Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar
4 GB for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
18 GB for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
The remainder (a bit under 24 GB) for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

I based each partition size on a combination of that particular OS release's suggested disk space requirement as well as where I envisioned most of my time being spent actually poking around and using the system (with OS 9 and 10.4/10.5 likely having more practical use than those earlier OS X releases).

I actually had most of the OS X original install discs already in my possession, but did need to download 10.3 (for some reason couldn't find that one). I had a 10.5 install DVD, but it was for an early MacBook, and it failed upon installation, leading me to believe that it contained mostly Intel-based resources on it and, as such, would not work properly. So I had to track down a PPC 10.5 install image, and one that would fit on a single-layer DVD-R. Macintosh Garden to the rescue for both those problems. I even still had the 10.0 Public Beta original CD, and was hoping I could get that one up and running too, but it kernel panicked during boot up...not surprising given that this Quicksilver came out after the PB's expiration date. The system came with its stock 128 MB of RAM, but I ordered a couple of 512 MB sticks to bring it up to 1.12 GB, in preparation for installing Leopard (which requires 512 MB minimum).

Cutting to the chase and skipping the menial trials and tribulations of each version's install...I was indeed successful installing Mac OS 9.2.2 as well as each version of Mac OS X, 10.0 through 10.5, onto this system. SEVEN versions of Mac OS on one Power PC Mac. No other PPC system created by Apple can lay claim to that ability without some hardware additions or hackery. And they all run pretty well, very slow (and loud) spinning hard drive aside.

For internet, the system did not come with an AirPort card, but I had an extra AirPort Express base station laying around, so I decided to use that in "client mode" and attach it via Ethernet to the G4. Works like a charm. Leopard even still was able to communicate with Apple's servers via Software Update and download and install the latest updates and software for that release. I was impressed. As this system only has USB 1.1 ports, I threw in an inexpensive USB 2.0 PCI card off Amazon as well; those ports only work as 1.1 ports in OS 9, but all the OS X partitions recognize and use them at full 2.0 speeds, so I was able to use some USB thumb drives at full speed and not have to wait a million years for file transfers.

Now for the really geeky and truly useless part. Remember that Zip drive it came with? Well, I remembered back in the early '00s when I owned a B&W G3 that I also had a USB Imation SuperDisk LS-120 drive. I vaguely remember taking the drive mechanism out of its external enclosure, removing the USB-to-IDE bridge off the back of the drive, and installing it internally in the B&W under the DVD drive. At some point, when I sold off that B&W years ago, I must've removed the SuperDisk drive and put it back in the USB enclosure, because I still have the drive. I decided to take it out of storage and test it first in its external enclosure...and it worked perfectly, with both SuperDisk diskettes (120 MB) as well as standard 1.44 MB floppy disks (though OS 9 required an install of the official SuperDisk drivers for the larger media to be recognized).

Hearkening back to my B&W experiment, and knowing that I had zero Zip disks laying around (but a handful of SuperDisks AND plenty of floppies), and knowing that there was already the proper front panel bezel in the system, I decided to do the same to this system...I took out the optical/Zip carriage, removed the SuperDisk drive from its USB enclosure, did a quick jumper change on the drive, and swapped the Zip drive out for the SuperDisk. And lo and behold...it works (mostly), and the bezel cutout is even the correct size still! All six OS X installs recognize SuperDisks and floppies with no drivers required, and they all mechanically eject the disks by dragging to the trash. I say 'mostly' works because the OS 9 install does not recognize any media inserted into the drive (my guess is because the SuperDisk drivers are USB-specific and won't properly recognize the drive, even though Apple System Profiler sees and names the drive properly in the ATA chain); as such, because the media is not recognized AND the bezel covers up the spot where the physical eject button would be, I have to use a thin flathead screwdriver to push the force-eject mechanism on the front to remove any disks inserted in OS 9. Lesson learned: simply don't use the drive at all in OS 9.

Bottom line of this experiment... I now have an ultra-rare Power Mac G4 setup: one that can boot into each Mac OS release from 9.2.2 through 10.5.8, with a matching one-cable ADC monitor, USB 2.0, AND a built-in floppy drive. Of course it has no real practical use in 2020, but I think it's a setup that has some cool potential for exploring and bridging the truly classic Mac realm to the more modern Mac realm. For my next venture with the system, I'm looking to add an IDE-to-CF adapter and running some alternate OSes...specifically, Lubuntu and MorphOS. The latter of those two, however, requires a Radeon graphics card (the system came with an NVIDIA GeForce2 MX, which MorphOS does not support), so I found a surprisingly cheap Radeon 9000 (with ADC connector) online and will attempt those additional installs once I get the adapter and graphics card all set up. I'll keep you posted.

If anyone is interested in any of this, I can post some pics of each system up and running, or might even do a YouTube video of it all.

And if you read this far, congrats!

 

[TheShortTimer]

So I was on Facebook Marketplace a few weeks back, and stumbled upon a seller getting rid of a Power Mac G4 Quicksilver, 867 MHz model, with matching 17" Apple Cinema Display (with ADC connector), for $150. I threw out a $100 offer to her and she accepted so I swung by and picked it up from her place.

The system is in immaculate condition, just a very few scuffs here and there but otherwise looks almost out-of-the-box clean. Same with the display. It even came with a built-in Zip drive under the Superdrive with the proper front bezel, but I replaced the Zip with something else that I think is cool and unique (more on that in a bit...). And as far as I can tell, everything seems to be functioning perfectly with it so far.

Congrats on your find!

If anyone is interested in any of this, I can post some pics of each system up and running, or might even do a YouTube video of it all.

Please do! Whilst reading your post, I immediately thought: where's the accompanying media?

What intrigues me most about this particular system is that this exact 867 MHz model is the ONLY Power Mac model that is supported by every release of PPC Mac OS X, from 10.0 through 10.5, as well as being OS 9-bootable. Earlier Power Macs are not rated fast enough for 10.5, and later Power Macs couldn't run 10.0 and/or boot OS 9. Even other Quicksilvers (733 Mhz and dual-800 Mhz) released in 2001 alongside this model are too slow for Leopard's CPU requirement (867 MHz and above G4).

Later Power Macs can't boot OS9? The Mirror Door models with FireWire 400 can boot OS9. As can and does my dual 1Ghz QS.

 

[dpfenninger]

Congrats on your find!



Please do! Whilst reading your post, I immediately thought: where's the accompanying media?



Later Power Macs can't boot OS9? The Mirror Door models with FireWire 400 can boot OS9. As can and does my dual 1Ghz QS.

Yes, but the QS2002 models cannot run 10.0, and the MDDs can’t run 10.0 or 10.1. This 867 MHz QS is the only one that can boot everything between 9.2 and 10.5.

 

[Amethyst1]

This 867 MHz QS is the only one that can boot everything between 9.2 and 10.5.

Leopard will also run on older/slower G4 towers; the 867 MHz clock speed check can be circumvented. In any case, congrats on your find.

 

[TheShortTimer]

Yes, but the QS2002 models cannot run 10.0, and the MDDs can’t run 10.0 or 10.1. This 867 MHz QS is the only one that can boot everything between 9.2 and 10.5.

Indeed but your claim regarding later Power Macs and OS9 is erroneous...

Leopard will also run on older/slower G4 towers; the 867 MHz clock speed check can be circumvented.

Come to think of it, Leopard will run on my 1999 Sawtooth, thanks to its Sonnet upgrade. That can boot everything from OS9 to 10.5

 

[Amethyst1]

Come to think of it, Leopard will run on my 1999 Sawtooth, thanks to its Sonnet upgrade. That can boot everything from OS9 to 10.5

The Sawtooth also does 8.6 - no idea if the CPU upgrade adversely affects that though. A 9600 with a G4 upgrade will boot everything from 7.6 (7.5?) to 10.5. Now that's bonkers.

 

[TheShortTimer]

The Sawtooth also does 8.6 - no idea if the CPU upgrade adversely affects that though. A 9600 with a G4 upgrade will boot everything from 7.6 (7.5?) to 10.5. Now that's bonkers.

I'll have to try installing 8.6 at some point and see what happens.

Here's the bonkers feat in action!

 

[dpfenninger]

Indeed but your claim regarding later Power Macs and OS9 is erroneous...



Come to think of it, Leopard will run on my 1999 Sawtooth, thanks to its Sonnet upgrade. That can boot everything from OS9 to 10.5

My original post was admittedly slightly off. What I meant by later systems not being able to boot OS 9 was the later G4 systems (starting late 2003...iBooks/eMacs/iMacs) and G5s...saying "Power Macs" was a mistype. And yes, I know that the Leopard install requirement can be worked around through either messing with the installer system check, installing on a supported system and then moving the hard drive over, or upgrading the CPU.

It is pretty cool to see earlier systems running up to Leopard with some hackery...even recently, I took a 2009 MacBook and got Catalina running on it, and have done similar OS installs with older systems in the past. I wonder if the opposite has been done...getting OS 9 bootable on some of those later PPC systems that were Classic-only.

The purpose of the post was simply to point out that the 867 MHz QS model was the only supported-by-Apple system that could boot every retail PPC OS X variant, with the bonus of still being OS 9-bootable, by leaving the stock CPU. I've clarified in the OP.

 

[Amethyst1]

I wonder if the opposite has been done...getting OS 9 bootable on some of those later PPC systems that were Classic-only.

Hell Yeah!!!

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/board,127.0.html?PHPSESSID=t1j5ir8d5q3cahl8kil7oe1b62

 

[rampancy]

Bravo with the amazing find! It makes me want to pull out one of my old Sawtooth machines out of mothballs to see if I could do something similar.

Do you have any backup PSUs in case the one you've got craps out?

 

[dpfenninger]

Bravo with the amazing find! It makes me want to pull out one of my old Sawtooth machines out of mothballs to see if I could do something similar.

Do you have any backup PSUs in case the one you've got craps out?

No, but that’s a good thought. This thing is loud, so I’d love to replace the hard drive (with CF) and eventually replace the PS and fan to create a quieter system.

 

[Amethyst1]

I’d love to replace the hard drive (with CF)

Better go for an mSATA SSD in an IDE adapter. Much faster and less problematic.

 

[TheShortTimer]

It is pretty cool to see earlier systems running up to Leopard with some hackery...even recently, I took a 2009 MacBook and got Catalina running on it, and have done similar OS installs with older systems in the past.

Likewise: I've been meaning to set up Greg Hrutkay's modified version of El Capitan on my 2006 MP 1,1 but I need to get round to ordering some RAM first...

I wonder if the opposite has been done...getting OS 9 bootable on some of those later PPC systems that were Classic-only.

OS 9 has been modified to work (albeit with a few shortcomings) on the G4 Mini - I burned the ISO but decided against installing it because only the VGA output mode is currently available. Perhaps that will be rectified in the near future. Check out this ThinkClassic thread which details - among other unsupported hardware marvels, the successful booting of OS 9 on an iBook G4.

I'd love to see a workaround that enables the G5 to boot OS 9 but I get the impression it's impossible.

The purpose of the post was simply to point out that the 867 MHz QS model was the only supported-by-Apple system that could boot every retail PPC OS X variant, with the bonus of still being OS 9-bootable, by leaving the stock CPU. I've clarified in the OP.

Understood! I'd love to see some images and/or a video when you have a chance.
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Better go for an mSATA SSD in an IDE adapter. Much faster and less problematic.

Agreed. That method has worked out for me perfectly.

 

[Amethyst1]

Likewise: I've been meaning to set up Greg Hrutkay's modified version of El Capitan on my 2006 MP 1,1 but I need to get round to ordering some RAM first...

I've run El Cap with 2 GB RAM and an SSD. Let's say it wasn't atrociously bad. Just bad.
[automerge]1589886452[/automerge]

OS 9 has been modified to work (albeit with a few shortcomings) on the G4 Mini - I burned the ISO but decided against installing it because only the VGA output mode is currently available.

Last time I tried OS 9 on my Mini (probably v8), DVI worked. It would only do 1920×2400 on a very special monitor, but it worked. Has that changed?

 

[Melbourne Park]

I have a double mirror door and have been getting some old files from it. Its a bit unstable though - the systems in it seem very patched. For instance, in 10.4, there is nothing in the applications folder, except for a utilities folder, which is empty. Another partitioned disk has 10.2 on it and also in the larger partition, 10.5. But the 10.5 disk is unstable. So I attached a firewire drive, and attempted to install Tiger (10.4) onto the firewire drive. The install told me that it would not install until it found 10.3 ... but I there's no longer a 10.3 it seems ... I have three Tiger CDs, one the original - but it won't install from that disk, I am not sure why.

Is there any way to download an image of 10.3, so I can install 10.3 and then do the 10.4 install from one of my Tiger CDs.

Thanks in expectation ...

I should say too, that the thing boots up into 10.2 at lightning speed.

 

[eyoungren]

I have a double mirror door and have been getting some old files from it. Its a bit unstable though - the systems in it seem very patched. For instance, in 10.4, there is nothing in the applications folder, except for a utilities folder, which is empty. Another partitioned disk has 10.2 on it and also in the larger partition, 10.5. But the 10.5 disk is unstable. So I attached a firewire drive, and attempted to install Tiger (10.4) onto the firewire drive. The install told me that it would not install until it found 10.3 ... but I there's no longer a 10.3 it seems ... I have three Tiger CDs, one the original - but it won't install from that disk, I am not sure why.

Is there any way to download an image of 10.3, so I can install 10.3 and then do the 10.4 install from one of my Tiger CDs.

Thanks in expectation ...

I should say too, that the thing boots up into 10.2 at lightning speed.

Sounds to me like someone probably tried to 'wipe' the drive by just deleting stuff. They probably ran into a permissions issue when they couldn't delete system folders.

It also sounds like you have a 10.4 upgrade disk and not a full installer. That's why it wants a copy of 10.3 first. macintoshgarden.org has boot disks (full installers). You'll need to burn a disk or google how to install from a USB stick (it's complicated).

Look here: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-osx-mac-os-10-ppc

Tiger and Leopard installers are towards the bottom.

 

[redheeler]

So I was on Facebook Marketplace a few weeks back, and stumbled upon a seller getting rid of a Power Mac G4 Quicksilver, 867 MHz model, with matching 17" Apple Cinema Display (with ADC connector), for $150. I threw out a $100 offer to her and she accepted so I swung by and picked it up from her place.

The system is in immaculate condition, just a very few scuffs here and there but otherwise looks almost out-of-the-box clean. Same with the display. It even came with a built-in Zip drive under the Superdrive with the proper front bezel, but I replaced the Zip with something else that I think is cool and unique (more on that in a bit...). And as far as I can tell, everything seems to be functioning perfectly with it so far.

What intrigues me most about this particular system is that this exact 867 MHz model is the ONLY Power Mac model that is supported by every retail release of PPC Mac OS X, from 10.0 through 10.5, as well as being OS 9-bootable, without requiring a CPU upgrade. Earlier PPCs are not rated fast enough for 10.5, and later PPCs couldn't run 10.0 and/or boot OS 9 (for post-late 2003 PPCs). Even other Quicksilvers (733 Mhz and dual-800 Mhz) released in 2001 alongside this model are too slow for Leopard's CPU requirement (867 MHz and above G4).

So as a proof-of-concept, I decided to demonstrate this uniqueness... the system's existing 60 GB hard disk came with some OS 9 system stuff on it, but there was no blessed system folder and could not boot. So I went about tracking down a Mac OS 9.2.2 install CD, burned it on my 2013 iMac, and used that to boot the PMG4 and partition its internal hard drive into SEVEN partitions, one for each supported Mac OS system as follows:

6 GB for Mac OS 9
2 GB for Mac OS X 10.0 Cheetah
2 GB for Mac OS X 10.1 Puma
4 GB for Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar
4 GB for Mac OS X 10.3 Panther
18 GB for Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger
The remainder (a bit under 24 GB) for Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard

I based each partition size on a combination of that particular OS release's suggested disk space requirement as well as where I envisioned most of my time being spent actually poking around and using the system (with OS 9 and 10.4/10.5 likely having more practical use than those earlier OS X releases).

I actually had most of the OS X original install discs already in my possession, but did need to download 10.3 (for some reason couldn't find that one). I had a 10.5 install DVD, but it was for an early MacBook, and it failed upon installation, leading me to believe that it contained mostly Intel-based resources on it and, as such, would not work properly. So I had to track down a PPC 10.5 install image, and one that would fit on a single-layer DVD-R. Macintosh Garden to the rescue for both those problems. I even still had the 10.0 Public Beta original CD, and was hoping I could get that one up and running too, but it kernel panicked during boot up...not surprising given that this Quicksilver came out after the PB's expiration date. The system came with its stock 128 MB of RAM, but I ordered a couple of 512 MB sticks to bring it up to 1.12 GB, in preparation for installing Leopard (which requires 512 MB minimum).

Cutting to the chase and skipping the menial trials and tribulations of each version's install...I was indeed successful installing Mac OS 9.2.2 as well as each version of Mac OS X, 10.0 through 10.5, onto this system. SEVEN versions of Mac OS on one Power PC Mac. No other PPC system created by Apple can lay claim to that ability without some hardware additions or hackery. And they all run pretty well, very slow (and loud) spinning hard drive aside.

For internet, the system did not come with an AirPort card, but I had an extra AirPort Express base station laying around, so I decided to use that in "client mode" and attach it via Ethernet to the G4. Works like a charm. Leopard even still was able to communicate with Apple's servers via Software Update and download and install the latest updates and software for that release. I was impressed. As this system only has USB 1.1 ports, I threw in an inexpensive USB 2.0 PCI card off Amazon as well; those ports only work as 1.1 ports in OS 9, but all the OS X partitions recognize and use them at full 2.0 speeds, so I was able to use some USB thumb drives at full speed and not have to wait a million years for file transfers.

Now for the really geeky and truly useless part. Remember that Zip drive it came with? Well, I remembered back in the early '00s when I owned a B&W G3 that I also had a USB Imation SuperDisk LS-120 drive. I vaguely remember taking the drive mechanism out of its external enclosure, removing the USB-to-IDE bridge off the back of the drive, and installing it internally in the B&W under the DVD drive. At some point, when I sold off that B&W years ago, I must've removed the SuperDisk drive and put it back in the USB enclosure, because I still have the drive. I decided to take it out of storage and test it first in its external enclosure...and it worked perfectly, with both SuperDisk diskettes (120 MB) as well as standard 1.44 MB floppy disks (though OS 9 required an install of the official SuperDisk drivers for the larger media to be recognized).

Hearkening back to my B&W experiment, and knowing that I had zero Zip disks laying around (but a handful of SuperDisks AND plenty of floppies), and knowing that there was already the proper front panel bezel in the system, I decided to do the same to this system...I took out the optical/Zip carriage, removed the SuperDisk drive from its USB enclosure, did a quick jumper change on the drive, and swapped the Zip drive out for the SuperDisk. And lo and behold...it works (mostly), and the bezel cutout is even the correct size still! All six OS X installs recognize SuperDisks and floppies with no drivers required, and they all mechanically eject the disks by dragging to the trash. I say 'mostly' works because the OS 9 install does not recognize any media inserted into the drive (my guess is because the SuperDisk drivers are USB-specific and won't properly recognize the drive, even though Apple System Profiler sees and names the drive properly in the ATA chain); as such, because the media is not recognized AND the bezel covers up the spot where the physical eject button would be, I have to use a thin flathead screwdriver to push the force-eject mechanism on the front to remove any disks inserted in OS 9. Lesson learned: simply don't use the drive at all in OS 9.

Bottom line of this experiment... I now have an ultra-rare Power Mac G4 setup: one that can boot into each Mac OS release from 9.2.2 through 10.5.8, with a matching one-cable ADC monitor, USB 2.0, AND a built-in floppy drive. Of course it has no real practical use in 2020, but I think it's a setup that has some cool potential for exploring and bridging the truly classic Mac realm to the more modern Mac realm. For my next venture with the system, I'm looking to add an IDE-to-CF adapter and running some alternate OSes...specifically, Lubuntu and MorphOS. The latter of those two, however, requires a Radeon graphics card (the system came with an NVIDIA GeForce2 MX, which MorphOS does not support), so I found a surprisingly cheap Radeon 9000 (with ADC connector) online and will attempt those additional installs once I get the adapter and graphics card all set up. I'll keep you posted.

If anyone is interested in any of this, I can post some pics of each system up and running, or might even do a YouTube video of it all.

And if you read this far, congrats!
View attachment 918103 View attachment 923322 View attachment 923323 View attachment 923324 View attachment 923326 View attachment 923327 View attachment 923328 View attachment 923329

A few years back I attempted something like this with a dual 500 MHz Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet, I chose it precisely because it could run the Mac OS X Public Beta and had performance comparable to the single 867 MHz which came out later at a lower price. Leopard worked despite being officially unsupported, the easiest way to get around the CPU check is to install it using a different supported Mac and then it boots / runs fine with no modification on the unsupported Power Mac.

 

[Melbourne Park]

Sounds to me like someone probably tried to 'wipe' the drive by just deleting stuff. They probably ran into a permissions issue when they couldn't delete system folders.

It also sounds like you have a 10.4 upgrade disk and not a full installer. That's why it wants a copy of 10.3 first. macintoshgarden.org has boot disks (full installers). You'll need to burn a disk or google how to install from a USB stick (it's complicated).

Look here: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-osx-mac-os-10-ppc

Tiger and Leopard installers are towards the bottom.

Thanks for your help.

What you say actually makes sense! I have also downloaded some mac OS Xs to assist me.

I'm actually trying to find out financial data - I gave this computer to my now deceased father after I had it for a couple of years. I switched to a notebook, which proved unsatisfactory, and I added to the notebook with a Mac Pro circa 2010, which still runs fine. I've not used much for several years, but it might help with my quest for information from the double mirror door PowerPC.

My brother - a solicitor - said he was the executor of my father's estate. My brother two and half years after my father died, handed himself into our Legal Services Board (I am in Australia), and my brother was later convicted for stealing 12 million dollars. Then my mother died, and I am now the executor of her Estate. And I have since found out that in fact, she should have been the Executor of my father's Estate, but my brother lied about that. It turns out my brother stole most of my father's money, and my Mum got little. We renovated a house and she lived with us. She had her own entrance and a large lift to go up to a lovely apartment upstairs with a great kitchen, balconies etc etc.

It appears my brother bought US shares, but then, before handing himself in, he'd have moved the funds somewhere else. I have found a company that he setup, to put money into, and then it would buy shares, hence the money was channelled through this company. The police did little investigation about where all the money went. So far, I've found the company that was used, and a couple of references to foreign shares.

There's millions gone, somewhere ... so it makes sense that my brother deleted a whole lot of data!

The computer has three drives in it though, and one is partitioned and is used for a system 10.4 or system 10.5 time machine backup. The problem for me is that particular drive keeps crashing. I thought I could boot from a Firewire drive, and transfer with Superduper the contents of the drives, to more stable Firewire drive partitions. And then be able to check the data without fearing of a total drive failure.

But the computer will not see the Firewire drives on booting up ... so I cannot boot from the firewire drives.

So I used Superduper to clone a drive onto a partition on the Firewire drive. That worked. But now, Superduper opens up and then shuts down, running on system 10.4. My versions cannot run on 10.2. I suspect there is a version of Superduper that works on 10.4, but I cannot find it - because it worked before. Spotlight is not working, because it's indexing - it says 55 hours left for it to finish its indexing.

I think I need to get a version of Superduper that works on either 10.2 or 10.4 (I did put 10.3 onto a Firewire partition but I then found I couldn't boot from the Firewire drive) and then I could move each drive's contents onto the firewire partitions.

I am getting I think some replacement IDE hard drives, and I then hope to use superduper to move the mirrored disk information back up (via Superduper onto the firewire drive partitions), back onto a good hard drive, and then be able to boot that drive and search for information! Emails are my key I think.

I also suspect I might have a virus somewhere - because the drives are being corrupted somehow. But for Diskwarrior, I'd have completely lost the main and key drive. I have not been able to check that drive yet, because its so unstable. I have not been able to use superduper on it yet, to move its information onto a firewire drive partition, where it's data will be safe.

The worst thing about all this, is that besides the frustration, I am being confronted by the greed and cunning of my bad brother. He wrecked many people's lives and its horrible confronting facing how cunning he is and what he did.

Cheers

MP

 

[Macbookprodude]

I'll have to try installing 8.6 at some point and see what happens.

Here's the bonkers feat in action!

The monitor is malfunctioning

 

[TheShortTimer]

The monitor is malfunctioning

It's not my video and it was made in 2008 so I imagine that they've probably replaced the monitor by now.

 

[Doq]

It's not even malfunctioning, it's just the rolling shutter effect from the camera.