Member Avatar for brindlebutt

Today I added an 80GB internal hard drive to my existing 40GB on my G4 running 10.3.9

It went in, I partitioned it, it showed up on desktop, life was wonderful. But when I tried to load 10.3.9 on to it via CD drive, I got prohibitory icon. When I would zap the PRAM, I would get back into my computer, but could never load 10.3.9 on my new drive because of the never-ending prohibitory icon. Dog-gone! And I'm getting Tiger in a few days :-(

It gets worse. So I'm trying this and that. The last thing I tried before everything fell apart was to try starting up via System Preferences/StartUp/Classic.

Since then, I just get the grey screen. PRAM doesn't do a thing any more. And when I try to boot off a CD (OS X and OS 9) to jump start this poor computer, I get the prohibitory icon.

I'm screwed, it seems -- but there's GOT to be a way out of this.

Can anyone help me -- PLEASE??!!

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A prohibitory symbol on a PowerPC Mac usually means the firmware saw a candidate boot volume but could not launch a valid OS from it. Common, testable causes are: the wrong partition map on the new disk (PowerPC requires Apple Partition Map, not GUID), a corrupted HFS+ filesystem or missing BootX/System files, or an installer disc that the machine will not accept. Given the Norton report of large-scale timestamp corruption, filesystem damage should be treated as a leading possibility.

Non‑destructive checks (try in this order):

  • Boot single‑user (hold Command+S at startup) and run a full disk check:
    /sbin/fsck -fy
/sbin/mount -uw /

    Repeat fsck until it reports the volume is OK. If single‑user mode is unavailable, use FireWire Target Disk Mode (hold T) or mount the drive on a working Mac and run Disk Utility there.

If the system folder exists but the Mac still refuses to boot, try blessing the CoreServices folder from a working Mac Terminal (replace the volume name exactly):

sudo bless --folder "/Volumes/Target/System/Library/CoreServices" --file "/Volumes/Target/System/Library/CoreServices/BootX" --setBoot

If the installer CD won’t boot from Open Firmware, one can try entering Open Firmware (Command+Option+O+F) and issuing:

boot cd:,\System\Library\CoreServices\BootX

If Disk Utility shows the partition map as GUID, or fsck/repairs fail repeatedly, back up any recoverable data and reformat the drive using Partition > Options > Apple Partition Map and format as “Mac OS Extended (Journaled)”, then reinstall. PRAM resets (Cmd+Option+P+R) are worth repeating; if PRAM behavior is flaky consider checking the motherboard battery. As pointed out, master/slave jumpers only matter on IDE chains—on many G4s the partition scheme and CoreServices/BootX are the more likely culprits. Given the filesystem errors reported by , the safest route is to mount the drive on a working Mac, salvage data, then reformat to the APM/HFS+ layout and reinstall.

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Member Avatar for John A

What happens when you hold down the option key at boot (with a Mac OS install disk in the drive)? And what about your slave/master jumpers on your hard drives? What are they set to?

Member Avatar for brindlebutt

When I hold down option, main drive and OS X CD show up, but give greyscreen/prohibitory icon as before.

I've ruled out drive problem (tried them in another computer) and CD drive problem.

Jeepers -- what's this about masters and slaves? I've seen it a few times, and have no idea what it refers to -- practically speaking. What would that have to do with this? Also -- what is a jumper?

I can see one hard drive being a slave to another, but can a CD drive have a master/slave relationship with a hard drive?

If so, I think we've isolated this problem. Also -- how do I correct it?

If not, gee, I don't know what's going on. Good to know the internal drives and SuperDrive are okay though. Too bad I can't get the whole thing to work though.

BTW -- don't know if I mentioned this or not -- but everything was working fine a few hours ago.

It only fritzed out on me when, in desperation, I used System Preferences to set Classic as startup. May or may not be relevant.

Regular application CDs have always worked in drive, but never tried to boot from system installation disk before.

I can't think what I might have done that would have caused it to malfunction....

Member Avatar for brindlebutt

Could this system software related? Is there a way I can "sneak in the back door" by starting up Command S or V, and "manually over-ride" by typing something in? I tried the fschk, but it kept saying it couldn't read my commands....

Member Avatar for John A

I'm not thinking properly. G4s don't use IDE for hard drive connections, do they? Because if not, master/slave has nothing to do with it. It's something purely related to IDE hard drives; it's a way of setting which hard drive is dominant (or "boot"), and which is the secondary one.

Anyway... this is really odd. I'm taking a wild stab in the dark, but why don't you try downloading and burning the Gentoo minimal CD to see if you can boot it?

Member Avatar for brindlebutt

Greetings from the Crew of Apollo XIII

I took "sick" drive out. Put it into other computer and tried to start up. Grey Screen.

So I hooked up other computer's original drive, and then attached "sick" drive. Sick drive showed up on desktop. I'm running Norton's now. It found some major problems, plus a bunch of minor ones -- incorrect creation dates -- 45,000 of them.

Tentative theory, as of this minute -- what messed the darned thing up was when I used System Preferences to choose Classic as startup. Now 10.3.9 is not "blessed" and puter can't find System on it.

I am going to do the usual "bless folder" stuff on other-computer-with-sick-drive, and see what happens. (Any other way to bless the darn thing in another computer before putting it into the one it belongs in?)

WHY the CD is not allowing me to start-up or re-install System from Installation disks remains a mystery.... That may be an additional problem.

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