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Tech Help Just Bought an Apple Computer, Need Some Help.

B

Broughtonkl

Guest
Okay so driving home from grocery shopping and saw a guy on the side of the road selling stuff so I stopped. He had a mac desktop (No monitor nothing else) for 10 dollars, it had ram and a hard drive, etc so I figured "What the heck, I'll give it a shot." I got home and started it up and it just has the apple logo and a loading thing at the bottom of the screen. I can hear the hard drive starting up but it won't load anything. Is it the OS system thats bad? I'm pretty tech savvy with windows computers but don't know a thing about mac's. If anyone knows anything that could help I'd appreciate it.

SPECS:
PowerMac G4
Model # M8570

Thanks in advance!
 

TwilightDeku

Sage of the Dark Forest
Joined
Mar 3, 2012
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Okay so driving home from grocery shopping and saw a guy on the side of the road selling stuff.

You bought an apple computer for 10 DOLLARS from some RANDOM GUY ON A STREET! ARE YOU CRAZY???????? O_O

The average mac computer these days will cost about 1000 dollars. If an item is 99% off, you know something is up. Anyway, to actually answer your question... I don't think you have the operating system installed. A computer without an operating system is like a wagon without wheels. Either that or the mac is just broken.

Anyway, congrats on comming to the mac side! You are instantly cool even though your computer doesn't work ;). I would take your mac to the apple store so you can see what is up.
 

donpedrox

Thrilla in Manilla
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Apr 12, 2012
Location
California
Is the hard drive making a clicking noise? It can be the OS or the hard drive at fault. I recommend a repair tool titled Disk Warrior it cost quite a bit but it might be cheaper then sending it in to apple to repair.

Disk Warrior is a diagnostic and repair tool with it you should be able to find out what is wrong with the system.

Edit: Upon further research it seems that what you described is a failing hard drive or a corrupted file system in either case you will need to get a fresh OS on there and you may have to buy that unless the disk was provided to you upon purchase. If it is a failing hard drive you will have to open the mac up and replace it as well as put the OS on it. You said yourself you are tech savvy so I assume you have no qualms about opening up a tower and replacing a hard drive.

Edit 2: just so you know I believe that these macs still ran on the PowerPC architecture so mac OS X 10.6 and up will not work.
 
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donpedrox

Thrilla in Manilla
Joined
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Location
California
The only problem with taking it to Apple will be the price they WILL overcharge you for what you need to get repaired which I suspect is the hard drive and or the OS
 

Norm

God-King of Teh Intarwebz
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If you have these problems, you might need to reinstall your OS, or just get a new one, in which case your choices are Windows (expensive, virus prone), Mac(newest one probably won't work on your computer, is even more expensive than Windows), or Linux(free, compatibility issues, hundreds of versions, and has only one known "wild" virus). I would probably choose Linux, but that's just me.
 

donpedrox

Thrilla in Manilla
Joined
Apr 12, 2012
Location
California
the only viable options that you suggest Norm is Mac or rather OS X and linux. The computer she bought has the powerpc architecture which would only support linux or mac osx
 

Norm

God-King of Teh Intarwebz
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Clearly in ur tube, blockin ur internets.
donpedrox, thanks for the correction. I'm not the magic tech guy around these parts, but I know a bit. Anyways, since the conversation has turned to Linux, there is a distro called Macpup that is designed for older computers and looks a bit like a regular Mac. I'd recommend that if a Mac is what you want.
 

Vanessa28

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Well I have a macbook and it is pretty good and decent. I never have problems with it. The only thing is that you STILL have to search for good Apple software to make it work on your laptop or computer but the gap is closing a bit here.

Don't you ever buy a pc for 10 dollars again. You never know what you get. This pc could be very old, stolen, filled with virusses or hacked so be careful.

Your operating system will definitely be a Macosx or Linux. You must make sure you got the right version if you want to make it work
 

Emma

The Cassandra
Site Staff
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Do not buy anything that normally costs hundreds for only $10 from some guy on street. In fact, do not buy ANYTHING from some guy on the street. Anything you get has something wrong with it. Mostly likely either having been stolen, or taken from the trash.
 

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