Chris Green

later powermac g4's will support any size IDE hard drive, some earlier models will only support 128GB per partition or less, verify your model before buying a hard drive, most made in 2002 and later will work with any sized drive.

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Quote from Monofrio:

So I installed the new cable and still no dice. Wish someone could give me some hope but it looks like its turning out to be a logic board issue. Just one question: If I use the macbook with a USB enclosure will it be terribly slow when accessing data? Or, if I decided to rig the unit with a USB to SATA connection inside the unit would that be a waste of time.

A Firewire 800 Enclosure will be faster, than USB, but i'm not sure whether your macbook pro has firewire 800 or not, but if it does, get a firewire 800 enclosure, that's the fastest evternal interface port next to eSATA, which mac's don't have

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Quote from QEIIRepair:

If an external display works, you need a replacement for your built-in screen. Available at ifixit. If the blue screen continues, your hard drive may need re-imaging or replacing. We've had this issue before, a blue screen, 9 times out of 10 it's the hard drive. Once, it's been the logic board.

if it boots to the install disk, than there may be a problem with the hard drive, but in my powermac G4, this happened, and changing the graphics card solved the problem,

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Quote from Monofrio:

Man, why is it that people that don't know squat try to help others that are apparently somewhat computer literate?

It seems that the people trying to help do not read or understand the situation and do nothing but confuse the person looking for help.

Now, I am not a Mac expert but I am pretty good with PC's and have recently switched to Mac. I have a macboot pro which I bought to repair. The MBP 2.16ghz, boots to a flashing folder with a question mark which usually means hard drive failure or curropt system. I took the thing apart to get to the hard drive and see if it was dead. I put the hard drive into a USB enclusre and all files were intact. I erased and check the the drive for errors but the drive is in perfect condition. I reinstalled the drive and but it is still not recognized by the disk utility. I can boot to the installation of Snow Leopard and boot of an external drive(original drive) but it will not recognize the internal HD.

As of now I am in the same boat as the original poster but all the suggestions are rubbish and we nned someone who knows what the *&^$ they are talking about(there are no jumper pins on the SATA drive so stop suggetsing this). I have also ordered a new ribbon cable to see is this is the isse but I am not to sure, I examined the cable in the unit it looks pretty good but really what do I know?

Anyways, if you have experienced this and fixed it or know somthing we dont please help us, if not please dont ad to the frustration.

Thank you,

The Flashing ? Folder doesn't always mean that the file system is corrupt, it can also mean that there is no operating system on the disc, try putting a mac os install disc and see if the drive is reconized, or, try booting while holding the option key, this will show a list of available boot drives

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Well, it sounds like you have 2 problems:

1) The computer's batter holds a weak charge, and only has a short lifespan.

2) Your PRAM Battery is dead. you can change this pretty easilly, and they cost $30-$60.

Many macs behave erradicly when their PRAM battery's get low.

or, you could check your PRAM battery, hook your leads up to a volt meter, and a good battery will measure between 3.2 and 3.6 Volts.

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Try reseting the PMU, im not sure which model you have but there might be a guide here on how to do it.

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yep, this is a common issue with theese computers

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you might be able, I believe the mac pro uses the Standard LGA771 Xeon socket, but knowing apple, the CPU's would have to be in matched pairs, and the clock speed would have to match up with one of the possible current configurations available on that computer, and have a compatible front side bus, and the right socket. But, remember, these are Nehalem Xeons, they can out-preform an equally clocked Hex Core Opteron. they are pretty heavy duty cpu's

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try removing the battery and pluging it into the AC adaptor, if it still goes into sleep, than you may want to look into removing the "Ambient Light Sensors" or thats what i think that they're called. This is a very complicated process, but removes the sensors that can tell when the laptop is closed, sometimes, these fail, causing the laptop to think that it is closed and going into sleep mode, even though it is open.

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nope, that isn't somthing do-able, the keyboards are really hard to open, but, if you look for an older apple wireless keyboard, they are like the pro keyboards, but clear acrylic and white keys, but they really only look good with G4-Based macs, and iMac G5's but, they do have the numeric keypad, and are bluetooth wireless, they go for about $50 on places like ebay.

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