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What should I do with this thing? (old iBook G4)

M

MasterModder

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 5, 2013
4
0
Greetings! I bought a purported non-functioning iBook G4 from someone at work today. I am a high end PC builder and know a thing or 2 about how to make computers work. Long story short is this:

After a thorough cleaning, (and I DO mean thorough! This guy is a slob!), reseating the battery and pushing the power button, I now have a working iBook G4 PPC with 1.3 ghz and 1.5 Gb of RAM. Everything seems to work alright, but has all of his junk on it and it of course did not come with any kind of recovery or OS discs. How can I clean the contents of this beast without spending any money on it? I only paid $10 for it and refuse to spend another dime on it. If I cannot find a solution, off to Ebay.

Cheers!
 
create a new user account with administrator permissions and get rid of the other user accounts once you're sure everything works fine with this one.
 
So I dont need to fuss with finding a place to get the 10.4 PPC disc and wipe the drive and reinstall? It seems very sluggish and there are files everywhere.
 
jwjsr said:
I hope the ''''slob" reads your post and kicks you *********** ass!!
Click to expand...
Why? It's nothing I haven't already told him to his face. It took me 30 minutes to get the cover back to white from the shades of brown and black it was. I have no shame. He should have paid me to take it!

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PowerPCMacMan said:
Do you need this?
Click to expand...

Not really sure if I do or not. It's my first dive into OSX.
 
heres how to do it since it seems the other members just want you to get your ass beat :p
Tricking your Mac into creating a new user account
Power on or restart your Mac (should work for any Mac OS X system).
At the chime (or grey screen if your chime is turned off), hold down Command+S on your keyboard to enter single-user mode.
This step is optional, but it’s a good idea because it checks the consistency of the hard disk before moving on. At the prompt, type fsck -fy and press Enter/Return. Wait for the checks to complete before going to the next step.
Type mount -uw / and press Enter.
Type rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone and press Enter.
Type shutdown -h now and press Enter.

if you make 1 mistake you must do it again and again until it works
 
Lil Chillbil said:
heres how to do it since it seems the other members just want you to get your ass beat :p
Tricking your Mac into creating a new user account
Power on or restart your Mac (should work for any Mac OS X system).
At the chime (or grey screen if your chime is turned off), hold down Command+S on your keyboard to enter single-user mode.
This step is optional, but it’s a good idea because it checks the consistency of the hard disk before moving on. At the prompt, type fsck -fy and press Enter/Return. Wait for the checks to complete before going to the next step.
Type mount -uw / and press Enter.
Type rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone and press Enter.
Type shutdown -h now and press Enter.

if you make 1 mistake you must do it again and again until it works
Click to expand...
Type rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone and press Enter.

I got to this point and it says "Read -only File System"

Does that mean it worked?
 
MasterModder said:
Type rm /var/db/.AppleSetupDone and press Enter.

I got to this point and it says "Read -only File System"

Does that mean it worked?
Click to expand...

it means that your s.o.l and I got nothing :confused:

May as well just shoot the breeze and wait for intell to respond:rolleyes:

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Actually I am remembering now. A read only file system means that it will not work and only a fresh install will fix it :(
 
MasterModder said:
Greetings! I bought a purported non-functioning iBook G4 from someone at work today. I am a high end PC builder and know a thing or 2 about how to make computers work. Long story short is this:

After a thorough cleaning, (and I DO mean thorough! This guy is a slob!), reseating the battery and pushing the power button, I now have a working iBook G4 PPC with 1.3 ghz and 1.5 Gb of RAM. Everything seems to work alright, but has all of his junk on it and it of course did not come with any kind of recovery or OS discs. How can I clean the contents of this beast without spending any money on it? I only paid $10 for it and refuse to spend another dime on it. If I cannot find a solution, off to Ebay.

Cheers!
Click to expand...
As an apple collector i would say you are lucky for only 10$ to have a working iBook G4. Next part? Just download somewhere Tiger OS or even better Leopard and install from the beginning, you can even sell it as a working unit for much more than you get it, thats a good deal :p
 
Lil Chillbil said:
it means that your s.o.l and I got nothing :confused:

May as well just shoot the breeze and wait for intell to respond:rolleyes:

----------

Actually I am remembering now. A read only file system means that it will not work and only a fresh install will fix it :(
Click to expand...

Try putting "sudo" before that. I don't think it will work, but it is worth a shot.
 
MasterModder said:
So I dont need to fuss with finding a place to get the 10.4 PPC disc and wipe the drive and reinstall? It seems very sluggish and there are files everywhere.
Click to expand...
Question.

Are you or are you not able to boot to the desktop (some OSX settings allow booting direct to the desktop of the primary account without using the login window/password)? Or do you have the account name/password of an account on this Mac?

If your answer is yes, then sending you off to create a new user account via terminal commands is making things more difficult than it should be.

Simply boot to the desktop, go to System Preferences>Accounts and create a new account and make it an admin. Give it a password and turn off the single user booting option (if present). Log out and then back in to the new account. Go back to System Preferences>Accounts and remove the previous account. Delete immediately if it asks you if you want to archive the account. That will wipe this guys previous personal information.

Anything he may have installed in the Applications folder will remain of course and you can delete it by throwing it in the trash and emptying it if you want. But all the personal junk from the previous account will be gone.

Mentioned previously by the way.
 
Last edited:
Exactly.
The fact that you can see all the clutter the previous owner left on his laptop means you can start up an you can create a new user account via system preferences. No terminal commands and single user mode needed.
 
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