PowerPC :: Booting From External FW Drive Can't Play Hulu-Old Chip Or FW Bottleneck?
Mar 9, 2009
I just set up an old G4 Mac Mini with a 1.5 GHz PPC chip and 64 MB VRAM as an HTPC with the intent to use it to watch Hulu and ABC.com and other sites where you can stream TV shows online. However, Hulu is very very choppy. The audio's fine but the video is pretty disappointing. In full screen it's really just a series of still pictures. I know Flash on the mini is supposed to not be that great, but is there anything I can do?
Is there any way to change the video settings of the g4 or of the TV to improve the streaming video playback? I'm playing it on a 40" Samsung LCD connected via DVI--> HDMI.
I'm booting off an external firewire drive through Firewire 400 and my concern is that perhaps this is the problem - the slowdown is not coming from the processor or the VRAM but rather from the Firewire. Can anyone with a similar setup let me know if this works for them. Is there anyway to speed up the I/O between the G4 and the Firewire drive? it's a LaCie 250GB D2 Hard Drive Extreme with Triple Interface.
According to the Activity Monitor, Safari's using 72% of the CPU to play from Hulu. According to Hulu's support page, the Mac Mini meets the system requirements. I'm just trying to watch the SD videos, not the HD. I have Flash 10 and Safari 3.1.2.
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Jul 2, 2010
I am trying to do a clean install of OSX 10.5 on my old powerbook G4 15". I am using a 10.5 image file on my external. I partitioned the external using GUID, and restored the image file onto the external. (this method works when installing on intel macs). Unfortunately, I cannot boot 10.5 using this method on my powerbook. Is it because i am using a firewire 800 cable? Should I be booting it using a firewire 400? I know that PPC macs cannot boot using usb, so i am stumped.
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Oct 9, 2010
I've recently started using Hulu (I know, late to the party...), and discovered that it does not run smoothly on my single G5. It's running 10.5 on a 1.6GHz G5 with 3GB of RAM, the stock hard drive, and Radeon 9600 graphics. The video lags horribly. The issue is not my internet connection; it works fine on my Thinkpad. Am I out of luck, or is there something I should try to patch things up? Using Firefox 3.6, for what it's worth.
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Feb 21, 2009
My step dad is showing some interest in my Mac and wants to give it a go. I was thinking of installing OS X on an external drive and booting directly into it from his PC. Is that possible?
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Jun 26, 2009
I have a mac pro running Leopard with Time Machine backup on an external 500GB FREECOM drive. My issue is that I cannot boot my mac while the drive is connect, because it seems it tries to boot from the external drive and it starts displaying a flashing folder with a question mark in it. So everytime I need to fire up my machine, I need to disconnect the external drive > boot > connect the external drive.
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Jul 12, 2009
My MacBook's hard drive recently took a turn for the worst. I can't boot up from my external with the drive still installed. If I take my internal hard drive out can I then boot up my mac from my external?
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Jan 24, 2010
Here's the rundown: my uncle gave me a pristine Powerbook G4 Titanium edition. Good computer, 15.5" screen, definitely worth keeping. He wiped the thing clean before giving it to me. The problem is the internal CD drive is super flaky and won't take an bootable CD well. It took my Tiger bootable once or twice and bonked out during the installation. Now, I can't get anything. BUT, I have a nice external firewire 400 CD/DVD drive. I hit option and can see the disc, but the PB won't take it. Also, of course I hit C on startup to try and load from the CD. Hasn't taken since the first few tries.
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Apr 11, 2010
My newly acquired "ibook G4 1.33ghz 12 inch" is having problems booting just after recently insatlling a brand new WD Scorpio Blue 160GB hard-drive. I installed myself with the very useful [URL] tutorial which ran through the process quite simply. Basically the background story here is, I was given the ibook by a friend of mine who didn't want it as she didn't have the patience, money and time to invest into having it fixed. Some three years ago she dropped it from her coffee table and since then the hard-drive started failing, getting louder and slower to eventually one day not switching on at all. She took the ibook to an Apple Genius bar in LA where they ran diagnostics and resulted it with having a failed hard-drive.
She never had it repaired and has since been keeping it stored away as a spare. She was kind enough to gift it to me, I was well up for the challenge to repair it so here I am!! So, I bought a new hard-drive, successfully installed it and then the moment of truth, the ibook DID switch on, this itself was good news. But ever since I haven't been able to progress any further, as when I switch the ibook on it makes the apple start-up sound then goes to a white screen and says this:
Invalid memory access at SRR0: ff8486a4 SRR1: 00003030
Apple PowerBook6, 7 4.9.3f0 BootROM built on 07/05/05 at 11:14:11
Copyright etc.
Then says:
To continue booting, type "mac-boot" and press return
To shut down, type "shut-down" and press return
Reducing system power
So if I type "mac-boot" it goes to a grey screen with a folder icon in the middle containing a little 'finder' face and a flashing question mark, and then if left for about 5 minutes or so it just switches itself off. Of course it occurred to me that there is nothing on the new hard-drive so it can't boot from anything, I tried using my intel mac's start up disk which has OSX tiger on it, but this doesn't give any better results, I start-up holding C and I here the disk being read but it can't boot from it, it still goes back to the OpenFirmware screen as above.
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Sep 17, 2008
I have a Power Mac G5 2.3Ghz dual-core system (M9591LL/A) with 2.5GBs of RAM and an Nvidia 6600 PCIe graphics card with 256MBs of RAM.
I tried playing a full-screen HD episode of "The Office" on Hulu.com and it was extremely choppy (like 0.5fps). The sound was fine. It's still quite choppy (~2fps) in a normal browser window (not full-screen)
Is this normal? Does this video card not support it? What is the most powerful card that can be installed in this machine? I'm not opposed to buying a PC card and flashing the ROM if need-be.
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May 7, 2009
Is it possible to boot from a external hard drive instead of my internal drive?
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Sep 27, 2009
I have a Black Macbook with 2GB ram, 250GB HDD, 2.4GHz Processor and have been trying to boot off of my 320GB firewire External HDD but it has so far been unsuccessful. I have the external formatted as GUID Partition Table, and have the four system disk folders on the drive (Applications, Library, System, Users) which I copied from a time machine backup. I have tried booting the MB while holding down the option key and the external HDD appears as a drive available for booting on. But when I select the external HDD a cross with a circle around it appears and it boots off the internal HDD instead of the external HDD.
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Mar 10, 2010
I'm planning on getting a SSD to put in my Mac Mini within the next month or two, but there are a few questions I have about it. I'll still have the 160 GB HDD that's in the Mini currently, and I'll buy an enclosure for it. But what I want to do, as to save space on the SSD (since I'll be buying 80 GB probably) is boot Windows 7 off the 160 GB. Is this possible?
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May 15, 2009
Environment clones ( made by Leopard compatible SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner) to two separate LaCie Firewire drives will not boot from those drives Leopard (10.5.6) running on an old 14" iBook G4 1.1 GHZ. Both SuperDuper and Carbon Copy Cloner declared the clones bootable, and they are selectable as Startup drives. All three drives (internal included) are partitioned using Apple Partition Map and OSX Extended Journaled. Has anyone met and solved this problem? BTW - I did read somewhere that Leopard is designed to use the GUID partition scheme; but this is of no use with a PPC Mac. Could this be the source of the problem?
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Aug 17, 2010
Specifically, I'm considering a freelance design gig for which the client supplies an external firewire drive with a) a bootable system, b) a more recent version of the Adobe Suite than I own (necessary - his files are all in the more recent version), c) all of the project files, and d) Suitcase and all of the tons of different fonts required. The gig is uninspiring - a coupon catalog - but each of his many clients gets to supply either their own print-ready PDF or copy/photos/fonts for him/me to layout...the result being there's a ton of fonts.
So in other words, it's a preconfigured system to simplify different people working on the same files. Not at the same time, obviously, but the idea being that a new person can simply boot up from this drive and go right to work. I've scanned the drive with VirusBarrier and found nothing wrong with it. And I don't see any suspicious programs in the Applications folder. And I don't have any reason to suspect that that this guy would do anything underhanded...but I'm understandably (I think) nervous. Is there a way to protect my internal drive/files when I boot from an external drive? It would give me peace of mind if there were steps I could take that would allow me to boot from his drive without worrying about the possibility that there MIGHT be a program or script or something that might muck about with my computer.
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Nov 25, 2009
I'm a new Mac user for about 6 months now. I bought a used PowerBook G4 15" 1.25 ghz notebook that was in good condition. It was well cared for by the previous owner. Only thing she had done was update the ram to 2 gigs.Recently I began to notice it running slower, programs were freezing and Garage Band couldn't run as many tracks. I installed recommended software updates before it started to get slower and I thought maybe that was the problem.So I attempted to do a fresh swipe of the hard drive and start from nothing. I saved some files and then tried to run the software installation cd. It didn't really help at all. I can't remember the error but it wouldn't let me reinstall OS X even when I held "c" when starting up. At one point I must have clicked run in target mode because I booted it up and it showed an unfamiliar screen. Then I restarted it once again and saw on Disk Utility that S.M.A.R.T. said something about hard drive failure.
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Sep 20, 2009
My parents bought a new iMac and have finally made the switch. There's one program on their old hard drive that they need to use. I've installed Windows XP on the new iMac, put the old pc hard disk in a USB2 enclosure and would love to use that to boot off of. The problem is that the iMac doesn't consider that as an option when booting.
The other issue is that if the power goes off and the computer reboots, the default seems to be for the Windows partition and the Mac OSX.
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Apr 28, 2009
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 3_0 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/528.18 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/7A280f Safari/525.20)
My Intel MacBook is in the shop, and I swapped out my hard drive before I sent it in and put it in a USB enclosure. I was able to boot my friend's MacBook Pro from the drive, but my G4 Mac Mini is not seeing it as an option (upon startup or otherwise). I can read files from it, but I really need to boot from the drive for some other things (cookies, passwords, and especially the ability to sync my iPod touch).
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Jan 13, 2008
I got this computer off my brother who tried to fix the video problem but was unsuccessful. I would like to set this computer up as a storage/media server.
1. How do I change some the preferences with-out the monitor. (I have ARD and I would like to set it up on this computer.)
I tried to install a ARD client package through TDM but it does not seem to work. ARD does not see the computer on my network so I connected the ibook to my Macbook Pro via ethernet cable and ARD saw it but was unable to connect it.
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Jul 29, 2010
This week I discovered that the hard drive on my white Core 2 Duo macbook is failing. It's of course out of warranty. I have superduper and am in the process of getting things ready to swap out the drive for a new one. Before going ahead with the new install, however, I wanted to test out the bootability of my superduper backup. I held option while restarting and chose to boot from the backup icon. The OSX tiger splash screen appeared and slowly booted up but then a login window appears asking for a name and a password. I assumed it was asking for my administrator name and password.
Therefore I entered that information. However, after entering the information and clicking on the login button the window shook back and forth and shook off my password as if to say "No. No!" I tried entering the admin information again and again. I tried the short name. I tried to reset my user information. Nothing worked. So, I tried to redo my backup thinking that there might be some issues on that side of things. But now my backup isn't complete. It's lagging at about 14 gigs shy of the full copy. I want to get this machine back to working order but am running stuck.
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Aug 1, 2007
I have a IBook G4 labtop. how to install the memory chip.
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Oct 1, 2007
A friend has a G4, can that laptop run OS X 10.whatever? I know nothing about the Apple laptops...does OS X require an Intel based chip? (I assume a g$ is NOT Intel based.)
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Apr 18, 2008
I have read about this issue before, and I know it is a major problem with this model iBook. When I turn on my iBook nothing shows on the display, just sound, and when it does work, there is just a fuzzy picture. Pressing on the area where the video chip is(left armrest) fixes the issue, but only if I hold it.
Someone said to put something in the case to apply pressure to the video chip, and this worked, but only for a little while before the same thing started happening again. What I need is some repair place that will fix this for cheap, also maybe "clean up" my iBook a bit, it's kind of dirty, missing the bottom bumpers, and missing some screws. What do you think it would cost to get this fixed and cleaned up?
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May 15, 2009
So here is my bright idea. I still may want to have Windows on my iMac for work projects *sigh* I think I came up with a solution, I rather not partition my iMac (when I buy it) 1TB drive for Windows. Don't want Windows on my main disk - I need the storage for Mac things, personal stuff etc. Is it possible to boot from a Firewire connected external HDD to run Windows?
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Feb 21, 2009
My iBook G4 randomly locks up. No kernel panic message. It is as if there is a pause button that is getting pushed on the screen and when it locks up if it is playing music it plays about 1 second then repeats.it makes it take longer to lock up but it still locks up. I have tried bigger shims and that does not help. If I try to install Leopard on the iBook it doesn't even make it 25% before locking up.
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Oct 5, 2008
Love my 12" PB 1.5ghz. Running Leopard on it. But the memory cap of 1.25gb with 256gb soldered on to the board (and only one memory slot) bugs me. Especially since this is the same logic board that goes into the 12" iBooks last revision that have 512mb soldered on to their boards. (Their memory cap is 1.5gbs and it does make a difference, especially on the 1.42ghz iBooks).I just asked Gary Dailey of Daystar if they could solder a 1 gig chip on the board.. seems like a better "upgrade" than overclocking with Leopard's memory demands Will let MR know if this can be done. If so, i'm in.
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Jun 23, 2009
Someone I know wants to buy a used Mac pro G5. It has a speed of 1,8 Ghz. I think he's going to use it for music. (logic pro, adium). But he said he was going to use FCS as well. His question was if he could replace the G5 singlecore chip, with a G5 dualcore chip. And if that's possible, could somebody give me extra info about compatibility and such. For example, will it just boot without problems when you replaced it, or do you need to do extra things (drivers, reinstalling the os and such). The G5 will be used in the near future for HD video editing. Also, I know the new intel mac pro have graphic cards from nvidia and ati. But what graphic cards do the G5 towers have? are they good?
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Mar 24, 2010
I found one on craigslist for $15 but want to make sure it will work, or if I do get it and try to install it I want to make sure I don't break my computer.
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Jan 12, 2007
Can anyone confirm the real-life differences in speed between a PC2700 1GB chip and a PC2100 IGB chip in a PowerBook G4 1.33Ghz which normally takes the PC2700? I know the slower chip is compatible so I'm just wondering about the difference in performance. I can get it at half the price of the normal, slightly faster chip.
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Aug 9, 2006
i have a power mac g-5 quad with an external dvd drive and a external hard drive and 2gb of ram. on my ext. hard drive i downloaded mac the ripper and that is where i put all my dvds, now today on my pmac i was using mac the ripper, popcorn, itunes, safari all at once and it froze up on me?why? could the ram be an issue? how may programs can i use at once with my pmac?
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May 25, 2010
Well I got rid of the quicksilvers since they died. Power supplys gave out and took the motherboards, So I sold what was left on EBAY.
My G4 Ethernet was sold to a co-worked and he is quite happy.
And I got this off ebay today:
Dual 1.8GHz PowerPC G5Procs
2GB RAM (2 x 1GB PC3200U DDR SDRAM)
Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-117D
Samsung HD160JJ/P 160GB SATA HDD (not apple labeled, not original to this system)
(1) Power Cord
pci106b,9 PCI Ethernet Controller
Well I didnt' read the fine print and BAZINGA! I noticed that it comes without a video card.
So For video editing, watching hulu and youtube and netflix What do you guys recommend.
I do have a PCI GEforce at home with 512 megs for PC and I was wondering if I could flash it and if so, does anyone know of a good walkthrough?
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