Power Mac G4 Cube will not boot any operating system but 10.4.0

[saltyboat]

So I recently got the Power Mac G4 Cube sent from hell but for some reason the cube has decided to be the biggest pain in computing history, No matter what I do I cannot get the Cube to boot the installer for any version of MacOS 9 or OS X except Mac OS X 10.4.0 and yes specifically 10.4.0.

Let me give you the rundown of the cube and all of the errors and what happens when I try to boot.

Specs
G4 450mhz Processor
700mb Ram
Original ATI Rage Graphics card
None Stock Seagate HDD
Shipped October 2000

What I have done to try and resolve the issues
I have replaced the CMOS, tried USB, DVD, CD-R and CD-RW boot drives all without success. I have tried 3 different HDD's and I have even updated the firmware which it was not fully up to date. It is now with the system running 4.1.9f1. While I cannot get the computer to boot any install media but 10.4 I was able to install MacOS 9.2.2 using the drag and drop install method from here This allowed me to easily boot into MacOS 9. I Have also reset the PRAM, done reset-all in the open firmware.

What I know
I know for a fact the DVD drive is working as it is able to read disks, watch films from them and execute software programs from the disks without issue on macOS 9 or 10.4 tiger. The system shows the disks which I have inserted and USB drives in the boot picker. It will only boot 10.4.0 installation software.

What I am unable to do
Due to the stupidly high cost for the original retail install media I am not able to get my hands on the original install disks for the Cube but I have found that to not be an issue as such as I have never had an issue before. I also do not have another PPC computer as this is my first introduction into Power PC land (Gone well hasn't it) I also do not have a firewire cable.

What happens for each version of the Mac Operating system.
MacOS 9
When I try to boot OS 9 installation media using all forms of media that I have mentioned above the following happens. The Disk or USB is listed within the boot picker with only the disk sometimes needing a reboot or some form of fiddling with to show up within the boot picker, upon pressing the button to load the installation media it will Crash the boot picker and cause it to refresh without the media showing until a refresh is done or the computer is rebooted.

Mac OS X 10.0
When attempting to boot 10.0 media through USB it shows consistently similar results, It is detected within the Picker and during boot will show a happy Mac followed by a ripped folder shortly after. Using Disk will occasionally show a ripped folder but usually crashes during the happy Mac stage with a spinning beachball of death cursor in the top left.

Mac OS X 10.1
The Same as with 10.0 in nearly every way except Using Disk almost always crashes during the happy Mac. It will not progress past this stage on either 10.0 or 10.1

Mac OS X 10.2
Regardless of the media used 10.2 will always shop up in the boot picker and begin loading but after a minute on the apple logo and skinny wheel will then show a prohibited symbol instead of the apple logo. This happened regardless of the ISO, Toast or alike image that was used to create the booting install media.

Mac OS X 10.3
Same as 10.2 without any change, Always with the prohibited symbol regardless of version or media used to boot.

Mac OS X 10.4
Install media works perfectly, Everything boots as expected on any media, USB works the quickest and it works just like any other Mac would. Shows up and installs fine and without error.


If anyone knows anyone who can help me with this, or anyone at all who has ideas or can help me. I would be super grateful as this is officially the G4 Cube from hell.

 

[Raging Dufus]

So I recently got the Power Mac G4 Cube sent from hell but for some reason the cube has decided to be the biggest pain in computing history, No matter what I do I cannot get the Cube to boot the installer for any version of MacOS 9 or OS X except Mac OS X 10.4.0 and yes specifically 10.4.0.

Let me give you the rundown of the cube and all of the errors and what happens when I try to boot.

Specs
G4 450mhz Processor
700mb Ram
Original ATI Rage Graphics card
None Stock Seagate HDD
Shipped October 2000

What I have done to try and resolve the issues
I have replaced the CMOS, tried USB, DVD, CD-R and CD-RW boot drives all without success. I have tried 3 different HDD's and I have even updated the firmware which it was not fully up to date. It is now with the system running 4.1.9f1. While I cannot get the computer to boot any install media but 10.4 I was able to install MacOS 9.2.2 using the drag and drop install method from here This allowed me to easily boot into MacOS 9. I Have also reset the PRAM, done reset-all in the open firmware.

What I know
I know for a fact the DVD drive is working as it is able to read disks, watch films from them and execute software programs from the disks without issue on macOS 9 or 10.4 tiger. The system shows the disks which I have inserted and USB drives in the boot picker. It will only boot 10.4.0 installation software.

What I am unable to do
Due to the stupidly high cost for the original retail install media I am not able to get my hands on the original install disks for the Cube but I have found that to not be an issue as such as I have never had an issue before. I also do not have another PPC computer as this is my first introduction into Power PC land (Gone well hasn't it) I also do not have a firewire cable.

What happens for each version of the Mac Operating system.
MacOS 9
When I try to boot OS 9 installation media using all forms of media that I have mentioned above the following happens. The Disk or USB is listed within the boot picker with only the disk sometimes needing a reboot or some form of fiddling with to show up within the boot picker, upon pressing the button to load the installation media it will Crash the boot picker and cause it to refresh without the media showing until a refresh is done or the computer is rebooted.

Mac OS X 10.0
When attempting to boot 10.0 media through USB it shows consistently similar results, It is detected within the Picker and during boot will show a happy Mac followed by a ripped folder shortly after. Using Disk will occasionally show a ripped folder but usually crashes during the happy Mac stage with a spinning beachball of death cursor in the top left.

Mac OS X 10.1
The Same as with 10.0 in nearly every way except Using Disk almost always crashes during the happy Mac. It will not progress past this stage on either 10.0 or 10.1

Mac OS X 10.2
Regardless of the media used 10.2 will always shop up in the boot picker and begin loading but after a minute on the apple logo and skinny wheel will then show a prohibited symbol instead of the apple logo. This happened regardless of the ISO, Toast or alike image that was used to create the booting install media.

Mac OS X 10.3
Same as 10.2 without any change, Always with the prohibited symbol regardless of version or media used to boot.

Mac OS X 10.4
Install media works perfectly, Everything boots as expected on any media, USB works the quickest and it works just like any other Mac would. Shows up and installs fine and without error.


If anyone knows anyone who can help me with this, or anyone at all who has ideas or can help me. I would be super grateful as this is officially the G4 Cube from hell.

Hi, welcome to PPC Macs! Here's what I would do.

Stop messing around with trying to boot from USB, yes it's possible but it can be tricky. Lots of others here can tell you how to do it, and often it makes sense to do it, or because of hardware failures may be the only way to do it, but - I'm an old PPC head and I've never even tried it. I won't unless I have to, because there's FireWire and FireWire is awesome. Your Mac was meant to be booted by FireWire. So use FireWire.

I know, you don't have a FireWire cable...which means you probably don't have a FireWire drive enclosure either. Here's how you solve that problem: get one of these [MODS: not my auction]. For those coming along later, if the link doesn't work, it was to an eBay listing for a FireWire IDE drive enclosure w/cable and power supply. I can't speak for the quality of the linked item, but that's more than a reasonable price ($21.99 as of date of this post). If you're going to continue to dabble in PPC Macs, trust me - you're gonna want one. I can't begin to tell you how much use I've gotten out of the several I have.

Having settled that, the procedure I'm about to recommend assumes that your problem lies somewhere between the media you're using and the hard disk(s) in your Mac. We already know that at least one of your optical drives works, that at least one of your hard drives works, that the hardware that lies between your optical drive and your hard drive (bus controllers, cables, etc.) all works, and that at least some of the install media you've used has been good, because you've successfully managed to get 10.4 and 9.2 onto the Cube and boot from them. Plus, you've updated your firmware. So, what's left could be some combination of picky optical drives, failing hard drives, and/or bad optical media - any or all of these could be causing your problem.

So again, here's what I'd do: Take the drive you currently have successfully running 10.4 & 9.2 out of your Cube, and put it in the FireWire enclosure. Then put one of those drives you've been swapping in & out of your Cube back into the Cube. Connect the enclosure to your Cube via FireWire, start the Cube to the boot picker, choose your FireWire drive and boot up from that. The reason we're doing this is so that you can check the S.M.A.R.T. status (disk health) of the hard drive inside the Cube; S.M.A.R.T. attributes can't be read from an external drive.

Now open 10.4's Disk Utility, select the drive that's inside the Cube from the menu on the left, and look at the bottom of the window to see if S.M.A.R.T. Status shows "Verified." If it doesn't, shut down, replace the drive inside your Cube with another one and re-do the above. Once you have a drive that shows good on S.M.A.R.T., select First Aid from the menu on top, then run "Repair Disk." If that returns errors, such as "volume can't be repaired" or something like that, the drive may have problems; if an erasure or reformat doesn't correct those problems, ditch that drive. Below is an image of the Disk Utility window; note that the views and menus will change depending on where you click.

Once you've settled on a good hard drive, use the "Partition" menu at the top of Disk Utility to create a small, perhaps 10 GB, partition. Then go to this page at macintoshgarden.org, where you will find a plethora of Mac OS X versions that will work with your Cube. Download one of those, then use the "Restore" menu to put the installer image onto the partition you just created. Reboot your Cube to the boot picker, select the disk partition you just created and boot from it - this should boot into the Mac OS X installer. Install it wherever you want it and, voila!...at least I hope so.

Forgive me if you know all this, you said you're new to PPC but I can see you knew enough to get to the boot picker. I don't think you have the "Cube from hell" - I mean, it boots, which is huge for a two-decade-old computer. It's probably just really picky, which isn't unheard of. If the above makes sense to you, give it a shot. If not, ask more questions; most of us on this board have some wisdom to share that can probably get you where you want to be.