My first Mac was a Powerbook 100, but I used Apple IIs in art school.

What was really cool was that some of the best games were Mac-only, like Marathon, Escape Velocity, and Myst (for a while, anyway).

Jude

G4 PowerMacs topped out at dual 1.42s, but Powerbooks topped out at a 1.67 GHz G4. That was prior to the transition to MBPs.

Sounds like your HD died. If you have Techtools Pro 4 you might be able to suss things out and possibly recover any data stored on it. Disk Warrior will only optimize your directory files and not be able to look beyond that. Techtools Pro you will be able to boot from the disk and examine what went wrong with your drive. Please note that if your HD is really messed up you'll probably have to go to a pro recovery shop to recover your data.
Patrick

Thanks Patrick. I'll look into getting Techtools Pro.

Does anyone have an old PowerPC 10.4 OS install disc that they are willing to sell cheaply or donate to us?

I assume you are at least getting the Apple start up sound--the boing?

Did you try holding down the option key while booting? This will locate all available bootable drives, including CDs. I assume you are able to get the original install CD or a bootable repair CD into the optical drive? (In other words, the computer will let you put a CD in?)

Seriously, try changing the battery first. It's a cheap, easy thing to try, and believe it or not, many things need that little charge to work right upon booting. Make sure you uplug everything, including the power cord, first. In fact sometimes unplugging the computer and taking out the battery for a half hour or so will reset everything and fix weird problems. If you press the cuda/pram reset button, make sure you only do it once, and briefly or you could cause more problems.

I really hate to say this, but if you are getting a kernel panic upon start up, which is what it sounds like from your description (is there a weird effect like a grey transparent window shade being draw down before the "panic" warning comes up?), it could be the logic board or something mounted on it--especially if it won't let you boot from the install disk.

Jude

I've had my PPC G5 for a couple years now and it still runs really well. I'd like to get an Intel mac eventually, but I don't have the money for it right now - maybe in a year or two (probably closer to two). So I voted "probably".

Good news- I was able to get the PPC Mac working again (it was just a corrupted OS) so we are back in business for making a PowerPC version of Book II.

OS X 10.3.9 compatible, please.

Jude

Yes, I believe 10.3.9 is the lowest version of MacOS we can support due to limitations with our compiler. Hopefully this won't change with the next update.

I've seen a lot of games in the past year or so that this G4 won't run, but there's no way I'm gonna buy a new machine just to run a game. Sometimes I can't play because I have a PPC, rather than Intel. Other times it's the 1.25 processor. And one that I actually bought, only to find out they don't actually support the video. When I asked them why it won't run well and why it's so dark the reply "the video card is integrated with the motherboard" and they don't support that.
So I hope your new game will run on my ancient relic (to me, it's still new!).

Yes, I have a powerPC ( G5), and I will be using it (I hope) in 2009, and I look forward to Eschalon 2.
Best Regards

I brought my PowerMac G4 in January 2000. Its a stock 400MHz G4/AGP.
Currently the machine runs with a 2GHz G4 and a 9800 Radeon, among with maxed ram and HD capacity.
Its definitely the best computer I ever brought and I dont see me replacing it, unless I am forced.