Mac G4

[PCTC2]

I recently bought an old iBook G4 from my boss. His HDD died so he just got a new Mac Intel-based Powerbook instead, so he sold me his old G4 for cheap.

I figured the HDD drive died b/c he either dropped it or b/c it is 2 or 3 years old. I personally go through multiple hard drives a year. Recently I put an older ATA HD from an old IBM ThinkPad Pentium III that died. It worked fine but it suddenly died while I was installing Linux on the G4.

I'm going to buy a new HDD tomorrow but would it be worth it? Is the ATA controller a HDD killer now? Or is it fine and I just had bad luck?

 

[santuitman]

Hello
Did you ever get a new drive? I'm curious as I may be getting an old one myself and was wondering how difficult it was to get up and running.

Cheers
Brian

 

[dnuggett]

TTT.. I am curious on the resolution as well.

 

[TheStu]

Originally posted by: dnuggett
TTT.. I am curious on the resolution as well.

I am 98% sure about these numbers
12" iBook G4 - 1024*768
14" iBook G4 - 1024*768 or 1280*1024
12" PowerBook G4 - 1280*1024
15" PowerBook G4 - 1280*800 or 1440*900
17" PowerBook G4 - 1440*900 or 1680*1050

13" MacBook - 1280*800
15" MacBook Pro - 1440*900
17" MacBook Pro - 1680*1050 or 1920*1200

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: TheStu

Originally posted by: dnuggett
TTT.. I am curious on the resolution as well.

I am 98% sure about these numbers
12" iBook G4 - 1024*768
14" iBook G4 - 1024*768 or 1280*1024
12" PowerBook G4 - 1280*1024
15" PowerBook G4 - 1280*800 or 1440*900
17" PowerBook G4 - 1440*900 or 1680*1050

13" MacBook - 1280*800
15" MacBook Pro - 1440*900
17" MacBook Pro - 1680*1050 or 1920*1200

Thanks TheStu, but I'm curious on the resolution to the OPs problem, not the resolution of the screens.

 

[TheStu]

Ah... haha, man am I a geek! I didn't even think of that meaning... wOw!

 

[joedhiggins]

It may simply be best to get a new, IDE HDD that fits your drive bay, and simply replace it, mwave, newegg, and many others sell such devices. Just ensure that the drive is of the appropriate size for its bay and and runs on the proper ATA format; you should be fine.

 

[TheStu]

Coming from someone that just replaced a hard drive in an iBook yesterday... have fun with the upgrade... you have to remove about 40 screws, the top and bottom case, the top and bottom EM shields, and the DC board... ugh, just to replace a hard drive

 

[dnuggett]

Originally posted by: TheStu
Coming from someone that just replaced a hard drive in an iBook yesterday... have fun with the upgrade... you have to remove about 40 screws, the top and bottom case, the top and bottom EM shields, and the DC board... ugh, just to replace a hard drive

So, so true. The other issue may be the drive cable or the logic board and not the drive itself. Thats why I was wanting to know how this ended up turning out for the OP.

 

[PCTC2]

Sorry Guys. Haven't been to the notebook Forum lately.

But the resolution was to replace the HDD's with a 44-pin IDE to dual-CF slot adapter and run CF cards. Apparently it does kill drives b/c it killed my MicroDrive, but not the solid-state CF cards. It was a total pain to open it 3 times and now I only have a single 4GB CF card in at the moment, but I will upgrading to dual 16GB CF cards soon.

Apple, get it together. Not only do you have to remove 40 screws, there are about 4 different size screws and that is a pain.

 

[TheStu]

They did get it together, the MacBook now requires you to only remove 3 screws to get at both the RAM and the Hard Drive within it.

 

[PCTC2]

good for them. i'm too poor to afford a new MacBook. 😉