Right, firstly I should say hello!! And I hope I can now get some help finally I bought a Powerbook g4 550 off of ebay for 20 pounds it hadn't been used for two years by the owner! I bought a charger for it and behold! it worked, it made the chime and everything seems to be working... except for the left hinge!

The only problem is that it has no operating system and I've been trying none stop for five weeks to get the machine to work with linux distros, but none of them work :'( either the discs have errors or they don't install properly... I've used GUI (live) installers, which looked like they worked, and then i rebooted the machine and it didn't work! I did try the 'video-ofonly' thing too but that don't work either.

I then finally found this os on wikipedia and decided that it looked easy enough!! but I still feel as if I could easily go wrong... Can anyone give me advice for installing the os?? so that i wont go wrong??
I'm really good with linux and windows, just not linux and mac! any advice will be greatfully recieved

Do you have an os 9.1+ or 10.1+ cd you can try to boot from? This would see if the drive is good. However, if you can get to a live, then the drive is likely good. Failed installs are probably due to a bad hard drive. If you want to stop by at http://www.macdomain.org, I'm the head of the HotLine(File) Server and we can hook you up with a TechTool Deluxe ISO so you can test your HDD.

Also, please give a link to your exact machine from everymac.com .

Once we ensure your hardware is good, JD can help you with the software side.

http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/p ... 4_550.html

there we go dude

I still need to burn off a disk, because i have a netbook. I'm gonna see my dad in a couple of weeks to burn off a cd. the powerbook is in overall good condition, I even have a spare logic board