Yesterday I solved the printing problem (detailed elsewhere here) by sourcing and buying an identical Brother printer which I installed this morning. All four Macs here print on it, as I anticipated.
However, while telling all four Macs to go+find the new printer driver (an unexpected and pesky task), I had a BLOOD RUNS COLD scenario. My trusty old G4 when switched on, displayed the Question Mark instead of booting up. Couldn't find a bootable disk. OH MY GAHHHHDD!
Keeping calm, I found the System Restore CD and booted off that, then did Repair Disk utility on the hard drive. Nothing reported, and it booted back again as usual.
Phew. A few more grey hairs.
Here's my idea and I can't see much wrong with it.
To my amazement there are loads of folks selling PowerPC G4s on e-Bay, because they've upgraded to Intel Macs. I've just bid a tiny amount for one in good operating condition and he'll post it (some sellers say collect-only). This one is more recent than mine, I can tell from the spec.
Plan is, I get all my files off my trustyG4 and put them on the e-Bay one. Then I have a FireWire port to make a bootable backup hard disk. (To my astonishment, my current trustyG4 is so old that is has no FireWire port and I know that Macs cannot boot off a USB external hard disk.......)
IF it don't work, I've only spent that tiny amount. If it don't work, there are other good-condition PowerPC G4s out there.
Wish me luck!
