Chosen Solution
I have a G4 titanium that has a strange issue. I have a working hard drive in it. When I put it into target disk mode, I can boot other systems off the hard drive. When I try to boot the machine itself it gives a question mark folder. I have system 9 and OS X tiger installed on it. When I press alt at startup it shows only the OS X install. Clicking on it just resets the boot selector. Same thing with 10.3 and a cd. What should I do? Thank you
Reaching back through the cobwebs to the very back room of my brain, I find a pile of papers half faded and out of sorts with no order. So as I piece the sheets back in some as-semblance of order… I think I remember Tiger offered dual boot within its self. No true dual partition so you could run older OS-9 apps within it. Some people also did a proper dual boot setup as well, that’s when you setup the drive with two partitions completely isolating the OS and app spaces. So the fact you see only the one startup disk is not unexpected. As for your question mark always showing up. This is caused when the PRAM battery has died! I hope you like the game of finding Waldo as we have a bit of a hunt to find it! Follow this guide to get the optical drive out of your system PowerBook G4 Titanium Onyx DVD Drive Replacement then pick up from Step 6 from this guide PowerBook G4 Titanium DVI PRAM Battery Replacement. Lift the battery board fully out so you can get to the battery.
