I cannot remember when we converted my old Flower Power iMac to its current role. The darned thing has been around for so long, powering up every morning at 530 AM, tapping into the stream, displaying key widgets for the day; life would be almost unimaginable without it.
Unfortunately, I had to consider it when the darned thing failed to boot properly on a recent Saturday morning. Good thing I knew what I was doing, there’s little need for “tech support” in my household.
The initial assessment was the OS being at fault since the Startup Manager said the hard drive was a valid choice. Too bad Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) was the first to be distributed on a DVD; the iMac only had a CD-RW drive. I transported it to work where I could find the legacy software to get it running again. No dice! I couldn’t get its contents transferred over to salvage settings and files I wanted to keep. Diagnostics stated that the hard drive was on the verge of failure. Then it came true within five minutes.
With some searching and asking around, I scored a replacement for the iMac in a couple days from a person who owned a 20 GB PATA (I remember that was state-of-the art) he said I could keep.
Now Tank Girl runs even faster. I had been thinking its poor performance in the Finder was the poor amount of RAM. Turns out I was receiving warnings or symptoms about what was to come.
I hope this hard drive lasts a couple years since I believe there should be some relatively cheap, used iMac G4s or G5s at Goodwill or somewhere to carry out the duties of a digital rooster.