Some of you might know that I just acquired a Powerbook G4 laptop. I just put in an HDD, that's clean (no partition, etc). I downloaded Ubuntu for PowerPC and burned it onto a CD (via Windows). I power up the laptop and insert the CD, I get nothing on the LCD screen. I hear the CD spin up fast when I turn it on and then it stops, but I hear nothing afterwards. I get nothing on the screen. At first I thought the LCD might be dead, but I hooked up the laptop to a monitor via the DVI port on the side and I still get nothing on the screen. Before all of this, the lapto did boot up and screen would turn on with the famous Mac Face logo on a folder and then with a question mark, looking for a boot partition? But now it doesnt do that. I can't even get the CD out of the drive. I hit the eject button but it doesn't pop out. Any help would be greatly appreciated!
To boot from a cdrom on g4 machines, you need to press the c key while the g4 powers up: https://help.ubuntu.com/6.10/ubuntu/installation-guide/powerpc/ch05s01.html
What was I saying yesterday...oh yeah! "Free stuff = fan-bloody-tastic" Can I revise that please? "Free stuff that turns out to be faulty = pain-in-the-ass" :crying: Hope it finally boots for you without having to shell any cash out.
If you need to ge the CD out, you want to push the point of a paperclip through the little hole on the drive. It's a manual eject button.
Linux on PPC macs is usually pretty spotty in terms of compatibility and support, it might just not run on that model.
It doesnt eject the drive. I'm thinking the CDROM drive is bad. I'm currently looking for a replacement, it doesn't seem that expensive. While I'm waiting on that, in the mean time I'll try to get of an ISO image of an actual bootable mac CD just to double check. I have ubuntu, powerpc version. I burned the ISO via Nero and it doesn't seem to boot, so thats why I'm thinking it might be the CDROM drive.
If the screen doesn't come on grey anymore, then it's not a problem with the CD. Read this article for help: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300537 Else, to boot from CD, hold down the C key as soon as your hear the startup chime. To be honest, i really don't know why you want to use Ubuntu on a Mac. I'd use MacOS for the £50, as Ubuntu is fairly shoddy on the PPC version.
Ubuntu is hte only thing I have that's 'mac compatible'. I don't have an OS X disc. I'm not willing to spend that much money on one just yet until I know for sure that everything else works. All I did was just burn an ISO image of the PPC version thinking it was just that easy. Once I know for sure that the CDROM drive and LCD do work, if it boots from a bootable mac CD, then I will buy Mac OS X for it. Now if, hopefully, someone knows how to create a mac boot CD, then please contact me! I spent hours on the Internet searching and read tutorials but they pretty much all say that I need mac OSX.
... if you're a skinflint/idiot who can't be bothered to spend less than £100 on something worthwhile. Madhatter: Right, something you need to do (seeing as the disc *should* boot by default, even burnt in Nero). Check to make sure your download was not corrupted. Go to the following page: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowToMD5SUM and follow the instructions for checking your CD image - if the two numbers match then it's successful. If not, you'll have to re-download it, preferably using BitTorrent (as it's checked for errors as its downloaded). If it checks out OK.... then, either I recommend reburning it on a disc COMPLETELY FREE OF SCRATCHES AND DUST and pray for the best, or I recommend requesting a Free version of the old Ubuntu CD from them: https://shipit.ubuntu.com/ Hope that helps!
