iFixit - Answers With Device "Power Mac G4 Quicksilver"

Power Mac G4 Quicksilver: It boots to a point then shuts down

Fri, 14 Dec 2018 06:07:12 -0700

Hi, I'm new to ifixit, loving it.

In brief, I bought a Power PC Quicksilver M8493, and to be frank, was diddled. When I got the machine home I discovered it had no HD.

Upon pressing the power button I'd get a glow, but no action.

I did a lot of googling and changed out the PRAM battery, pressed re-set etc and started to get a partial boot.

I left the machine for a while, returned and got a full boot to folder with flashing ? no surprise there as there's no hard drive.

It would hold on the folder screen and then shut down. I subsequently discovered that if I left the machine plugged in all the time I would get the boot to folder screen, most of the time. If I unplugged for a while, it would go back to glowing button.

I did some more googling and followed the procedure of

(a) unplug everything

(b) press power button

(d) press reset button next to pram battery

(e) reconnect and reboot

this resulted in the same glowing but inactive power button issue, and after a while of being plugged in, I'd get the partial boot.

I also did the boot with CMD-OPtion P R held down, this resulted in one instant reboot, then nothing.

From my further googling and forum searching it's looking like it may be a PSU problem?? and help would be much appreciated

⟐ Answer accepted December 14, 2018 at 6:07 MST

Power Mac G4 Quicksilver: Can I add a 2nd hard drive?

Thu, 19 Jul 2018 05:06:23 -0700

I just salvaged a hard drive from my powerbook G4 and am hoping to add it to my Power Mac G4 desktop, from the year 2000 or so. I have not opened the desktop up yet. Is it possible to add it?

⟐ Answer accepted July 19, 2018 at 5:06 MST

Power Mac G4 Quicksilver: Wont boot, monitor wont boot either, black screen.

Fri, 22 Jun 2018 11:16:02 -0700

Mac Quicksilver G4 desktop, first wouldnt come out of sleep mode so I unplugged it, now wont startup at all. On/off button lights up then goes black, no sound, nothing.

⟐ Commented June 22, 2018 at 11:16 MST

Power Mac G4 Quicksilver: Why do I keep hitting a blue screen?

Tue, 23 Jan 2018 04:51:00 -0700

So I got a quicksilver from a pawn shop for 10 bucks. It was cheap and I tested it before I bought it. When I got it, it had graphical issues (lines through the screen and such) and didn't boot to the OS. I got it home and attempted to get it running. First thing I did was replace the graphics card which fixed the graphical errors. I then tried getting into the OS. I found that the drive that had the OS installed on it was corrupt and failing. I replaced that, and got my hands on a OS 10.5 retail install disk. It doesn't matter what I do the retail disk will not get past just a blue screen and mouse. I put it in a different machine and used that machine to install OS 10.5 onto the hard drive (the machine has a 1.5 ghz aftermarket proc from OWC so I installed it to an apple file system partition rather than a EUID partition) normal boot hits the same blue screen, install CD blue screen as well, safeboot actually comes up to the OS. Anyone got any ideas what the heck is going on?

⟐ Answered January 23, 2018 at 4:51 MST

Power Mac G4 Quicksilver: How to transfer data from removed hard drive?

Fri, 03 Feb 2017 20:35:11 -0700

I am trying to recover some old files on a Mac G4 but it will not turn on. I took out the hard drive but have no idea how to get the files from it. Anyone have some advice for me? THX

⟐ Answered February 03, 2017 at 20:35 MST

Power Mac G4 Quicksilver: Font panel blocking optical drive drawer after re attachment... Stuck

Fri, 22 May 2020 05:25:29 -0700

I'm rebuilding a power mac G4 quicksilver from 2 non starters. Got one going but had to take the front panel off to swap over the white pastic button mechanism , the bit stopping me completing this build is i cannot for the life of me figure out how to re attach the front panel so that the cd/ dvd drawer still opens. Any ideas on this anyone?

Power Mac G4 Quicksilver: How to power 4 hard drives internally

Thu, 23 Apr 2020 14:59:16 -0700

Ok, I know I’m going retro with this. This is the 933Mhz model. I’ve been doing some upgrading and I noticed that it has the ability to instal 4 internal hard drives. a dual bay if you will at the back, and two single mounts in the middle and up front. However, there’s only enough molex connectors to power three drives. There’s an additional two at the top of the case for the dvd and ZIP drives, but those are used. The one for the ZIP is too short to reach anyways.

Was this option only there for RAID? If so, did the controller card somehow provide another power connector? I’ve looked everywhere and I can’t seem to find it.

Power Mac G4 Quicksilver: On Button Lights but QuickSilver Does Not Start

Fri, 18 Jan 2019 14:49:13 -0700

WHAT I HAVE: I have a 2001 Mac QuickSilver 733 Mhz whose hard drive died. I purchased another 40 Gig drive, a new PMU battery and another 512 meg card to add to the two 512 cards already on the machine.

PROBLEM: Reconnected the Mac and pressed the “ON” button which glowed for about 1 second and went out. The Mac did not turn on.

SOLUTION, PLEASE:

Power Mac G4 Quicksilver: Replacing bad USB port

Thu, 17 Sep 2015 18:28:38 -0700

The USB port on my Quicksilver G4 that my keyboard is plugged into no longer works. There are 2 such ports on this computer; the other one works. Can the bad port be replaced/repaired?

⟐ Commented September 17, 2015 at 18:28 MST