Those Old MacIntosh Blues

As if I wasn’t have enough problems at the moment, my MacIntosh G-4 seems to have chosen this moment to give up the ghost.

It slowed down so much that it was barely usable. When I restarted it, nothing happened and it just kept running, never even got to the question mark. After restarting it in darwin mode and trying to run fsck -y I got the message “load of sbin/mach_init, errno2.” So far I haven’t been able to find out what this means, but if it’s like the news I’ve been getting around here lately, it’s not going to be good news, and it’s probably going to be expensive news.

Naturally, what better time for bad news than when I’m just about to move and buy a new house that will almost invariably be more expensive than the house I’m in now. Do you think these machines actually conspire with each other ?

Right now I’m writing this, with great difficulty, I might add, on my iBook. I find it difficult to get used to the small screen, but, most of all, to the flat, chicklet type keyboard. I love this machine when I’m traveling, but have little patience for it when I’m at home.

I’ll try to get my G-4 into the dealer tomorrow and see what it will cost me to have it repaired. If it’s too expensive, I doubt that I’ll bother having it fixed even though it’s just a little over two years old. Nor will I be able to buy a new G5 at this time, if they’re even available yet.

I expect that this, combined with my need to get ready to move, is going to put a real crimp in my blogging efforts, though, as you can tell, I’m probably addicted to reporting my life’s joys and problems on the web.

At least I can get online with the iBook.

6 thoughts on “Those Old MacIntosh Blues”

  1. Oh, I sympathise so very much. I do hope the G-4 is cheaply revivable. But at least, as you say, amid all the turmoil you have portable internet access.

    Are chicklets sort of flat, square white sweets? If they’re what I think they are then they describe the keys perfectly.

  2. G4 parts are fairly easy to swap out, and not horrendously expensive. If what you’ve got is a hard-drive problem, your data is endangered, but otherwise it’s an easy and cheap (sub-$100 if you install yourself, and I managed it) fix.

    Motherboard, more expensive, but not outrageously so. I think there’s hope.

  3. It could well be the hard drive; I’ve had to rebuild it from the Unix level several times in the last few months.

    But when it’s a hard drive usually it would start from the backup firewire drive I have attached, This time it just won’t do anything exept spin endlesslly, not even a question mark. Won’t start from a CD. I don’t really know where the Unix system comes from. Hopefully it is the hard drive.

    I’ll at least have to take it in to have it diagnosed. I’ll lose a little if I have to replace the hard drive,but not much since I back up every two weeks or so.

    I’m cautiously optimistic, as opposed to just plain pissed off.

  4. Thanks to some great advice from Dorothea and with the help of a Macally stand, I’m not having too many problems using my iBook as my main computer.

    Turns out that the problem with my G-4 was a corrupted OSX, which surprises me a bit since I never could get it to boot from my Norton CD or from my other hard drive.

    I still wonder what kind of secret they used to get it to boot enough that they could install the new version of OSX.

    Thankfully, though I haven’t paid the bill yet, it is going to be relatively inexpensive and I will have it back just about the same time that the carpet will be laid in the family room.

    Yeah, some more good news. Maybe Jonathon changed my luck, if only temporarily.

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