From: Milton Aupperle <milton@outcastsoft.com>

Date: July 14, 2010 3:27:19 PM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Re: [Astro_IIDC] My Powerbook G4 is dying!

That sounds more like a dying hard drive than any other issue. I'm on my 4th internal drive for my G4 laptop, two of the four failed and were Apple installed drives. When it happens all manner of weird crap happens including crashes, files not being right, data not being saved etc.

Run Apples' Disk Utility and see if "S.M.A.R.T." Status  says it' "Verified" or not. If it doesn't indicate the drive was verified, it's toast and time to replace.

Secondly, it is possible the PRAM batter is dying. I had a similar issue at -45°C ambient last winter and even with heating pads under the laptop and on the back screen, the pram battery would freeze solid and the laptop would spontaneously shut down and re-boot.

HTH..

Milton Aupperle

On 14-Jul-10, at 2:58 PM, doobisary wrote:

I was using it to image at my dark sky site in Utah last week, and I started getting the "gray screen of death" ("you need to hold down the restart button for several seconds" message).  Happened in the middle of imaging with the Meade DSI Pro III and Nebulosity, but I don't think that was the cause.  I had successfully done some image tests with the Scorpion 1600x1200, but only with a 4" Meade SCT (unguided), so nothing to write home about imagewise.

Anyway, I restarted the computer (which has periodically had this problem since new, about 4.5 years ago), and it crashed again about 6 times in a row.  After that, it would never fully start, the "progress bar" would get all the way to the end and it would sit like that for as much as two hours.

So I set it aside and used my work Macbook Pro for imaging with nebulosity.

When I got home, I backed everything up on the g4 and reformatted the HD, re-installed OS 10.4 and all the updates (which took a few hours).  Got astro IIDC re-installed okay, but all other applications with installer package file installers (Voyager 4.5, EquinoX6, EquinoX Image) would only show up as a "document" icon, not the installer icon, and these wouldn't open.  Then the mac started crashing again.  It restarts okay, most times, but it crashed about 4 times total last night while I tried to work on it.

I'm thinking that this "lemon" (only one of two Macs I've ever had in the last 26 years that's had this problem - the other was a work Mac desktop G4 several years ago) is about to die for keeps.

So, I'm looking for a replacement.  I'd rather not spend a lot on a computer that I'm going to be taking out in the dust/dew/heat/cold at night, but I will if it's the only or even just the best way to go here.

I think my preferred option would be to find a used Macbook Pro (with firewire! not one of those goofy recent models without it) from an ebay seller or retailier with a lot of positive feedback.

Second choice would be another used G4 that I can take the (few months old) battery and 160GB hard drive from my old one to put into the replacement.  But it's still a G4, and the occasional Windows apps I need to run are agonizingly slow in Virtual PC.

I've at various times thought to build a "Hackintosh", but that would be a better project for a desktop machine, not a laptop, from what I've gathered.  Plus, PC laptops hardly ever have firewire ports anymore, even if I could ever hope one to be accessible by Astro IIDC.

Thoughts?  Like, does anybody think my G4 is worth saving?  (I do intend to keep it and used it as a backup storage device (at least), but not to rely on it as my main field laptop again).

Or, have I already talked myself into a used Macbook Pro (and is that a reasonable option)?

Thanks for your time!

-Tim.