I don’t really know the full details of this machine, I’m just helping out a friend.

He’s aquired a Powerbook G4 500Mhz. It has a DVD Rom drive that doesn’t seem to work. Any CD that I put in just gets ejected after about a minute. Any hardware diagnostics I have are on, you guessed it, CD so I can’t confirm exactly what’s wrong with it, it just appears to be pooched. Any ideas for confirming what’s wrong with it?

It currently has OS 9.1. He wants to install X but the lack of a working CD drive is making that difficult.

He’s tried hooking up an external USB CD drive but the machine doesn’t recognize that anything’s been plugged in. Is there any way to check if the USB ports are hosed? I suspect it might just be a matter of finding drivers for it but so far that’s just produced dead ends. I’m currently waiting for another friend to get back into town so I can borrow him USB CD drive since we have drivers for that and know it works with OS 9.

The PB also has a broken hinge on the right side and since cables run through there the slightest bump often makes the screen go black. We’re watching Ebay for parts but if anyone has other ideas that’d be most useful.

Thanks guys. I’ll add more details as I can get them.

Any Firewire ports on this laptop?

Have you tried booting to a CD?  It might be the OS farking with the CDs, but if the firmware is still intact it should work just fine and boot to the CD well.

If that’s the case, then all you have to do is boot directly into safe mode and just do a fresh install of OSX.

Nope, no firewire that I can remember.

I won’t boot from CD. It just sits there for a while then ejects the CD and boots from the HD. I found out after posting this that the guy who I was helping has decided not to bother with it any further. I’m going to try to buy it from him for stupid cheap but until then there’s no point in trying to help. Thanks for your suggestions.

When you do go ahead and buy it, you might find this site useful. That’s if you feel adventurous enough to replace the drive or fix the loose connection problem. It has detailed instructions on how to open up the machine and special “screw sheets” (seriously no innuendo intended ) that you can put all the screws onto so you don’t lose any.

Hope that helped…

Con

“Is there any way to check if the USB ports are hosed?”

You could try plugging in a USB mouse in there… I think OS 9 can see those, right? (Been ages since I’ve used it.)

You could try plugging in a USB mouse in there… I think OS 9 can see those, right? (Been ages since I’ve used it.)

Not without mouse-specific drivers, I don’t think. That was the case with 9.5 for me, at least.

Hmm. There’s probably an ethernet port on there or at least a modem, so I suppose she could put drivers on (or USBOverdrive, I used that back in pre-OSX) to test by hooking up to the internet or a network, or even a null-modem connection to another Mac.

If you have a regular apple usb mouse it should work with any version of 9. It has drivers for that.