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Powermac G4 MDD has black screen after apple boot screen?

drnebulous

drnebulous

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 27, 2014
181
0
Salford, UK
My Powermac G4 MDD has worked fine, but now after the white apple boot screen (the one with the grey apple logo), the screen suddenly goes black. I have tried resetting the PRAM (cmd-alt-p-r), but this doesn't work. I don't understand why this is happening.


The Specs:
Powermac G4 MDD
Dual 867MHz CPU
512MB RAM
2x 1TB Hard Drives


I really need this to work! Please help!
 
Right after hearing the startup chime, press and hole the shift key until you see the blue screen or you see it say Safe Boot.
 
It's the second hard drive.

When I unplug it the computer boots in 7 seconds!

When it is plugged in, it either does the black screen thing or has the ? at boot up.

But I really need the second hard drive.

The are both Sata hard drives.

This is what I do:
Sata HD > Sata to sata extension cable > Sata to IDE adapter

Even though it is sata, do you think I need a jumper as it is sort of ide? If so, where do I put it?

The hard drives are both Western Digital SE 1TB
 
The IDE/PATA adapter may need to have a jumper set on it. Are both drives plugged into the same cable?
 
Yes they are.

Here are some photos (sorry about the messy wiring!)
 

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That adapter doesn't appear to have a master/slave jumper or switch on it. Have you looked into use a PCI SATA card instead?
 
Intell said:
That adapter doesn't appear to have a master/slave jumper or switch on it. Have you looked into use a PCI SATA card instead?
Click to expand...


After this load of hell, yes, I would love a sata PCI card. Which one would work? I live in the UK by the way. I would like to keep it under £20 but if that isn't possible then whatever the cheapest would do.
 
Here's what I found - working with a dual 1.25 GHz MDD and a 20" aluminum ACD (with DVI).

The machine boots as normal up through the screen with the gray apple logo and spinner. After that, it cuts to black and stays there.

If I hook the machine up to another monitor via VGA, it all works fine.

Now I have another problem, which is to figure out why this machine can't see the disk I put in there...
 
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