Mac Gurus, Need help w/my dad's laptop

[ThePsychoHobbit]

I know this isn't Gentoo-related really, and I apologize for that, but I'm hoping someone can and will help me anyway. Well, here ya go...

First, some background:
I got a laptop here. It's a G3 by default, but has an "upgrade card" to "turn it into" a G4 (it's got a processor upgrade, in essence.) The last two weeks, the hard drive has been acting up -- I don't know precisely what it's been doing, all I know is it's been acting oddly.

In order to get OS X to install, it must first be downgraded back down to a G3. Then OS X can be installed. Then the G4 upgrade can be placed back in. The reason for this seems to be that the computer refuses to boot from the OS X Install CD unless the original processor is in use.



Now, the problem:
Earlier today, the OS X partition "disappeared", and OS X cannot be booted into. I can see the partition if I'm using Disk First Aid, but when I attempt to verify the drive, I get an "unable to remount error". I was going to boot from the OS X CD, since I'm a bit more familiar with nix than I am Mac these days, but the CD wouldn't boot (see above), so I couldn't do that.

However, I CAN and am currently booted into MacOS 9. 9 works, 10 doesn't.



Lastly, the question:
Do you know of any good scandisk-type utilities for Mac, or any good utilities? I know Tech Tool and Norton used to be out there, but I can't seem to find any trace of them anymore and don't know if they're really any good anyway. I've heard people talk of MacTest PRO (I think), but that's not available anywhere (maybe off ebay). Disk First Aid seems to suck as much now as it did in the days of Mac OS 5 (back when I used Mac). I was originally going to boot it with Knoppix, since its such a nice recovery tool, but there's no PPC version. I'm currently downloading the Gentoo PPC ISO, but I really don't know what else I can try. If anyone can make any suggestions or anything, that would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you. Again, ANY help or suggestions are welcome.

[pindar]

You could try this or this. HTH

[servobf]

If you have access to annother mac, you could try this:

1) Boot the laptop in target mode (it boots as a firewire disk, hold down t while it's booting)
2) Plug the laptop into annother mac - It will show up as a firewire disk
3) Install OSX from through the good computer.
Here you have two options. Use CarbonCopyCloner and just clone an existing good OSX instalation, or possibly boot this second computer from some install disks, and install to the attached firewire disk

I'd personally use CCC to backup the laptop, to the second computer, then use CCC again to copy the good install onto the laptop.

Good luck!
~Michael
CarbonCopyCloner

[ThePsychoHobbit]

servobf -- I would try that, except A) we don't have another OS X-Capable-Mac around. and B) the laptop has no firewire ports. Swapping out the G4 upgrade and replacing it with the G3 isn't really much of a hassle, anyway. But thanks for the suggestion, I didn't know about that.

[zojas]

you could try

http://www.sysresccd.org/

it's intended more for linux though

your best bet is to try to boot with the os X cd, then you can run fsck, or get os x to boot into single user mode (hold down cmd-s right after the startup bong) and run fsck
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http://www.desertsol.com/~kevin/ppc

[porodzila]

Another thing that might work, and has solved similar problems in the past with OSX not liking the drive, is to boot gentoo, use mac-fdisk, and clear it off all the way, wipe out everything on there, and then install OSX.
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ubi primum potero, me hinc subduco.