It takes a week?

It's a $7,000 check from an out-of-state bank. $5000 of it takes 5 days, the rest 11 or something like that. Not sure why, but it's been like that with all the checks I've gotten from my fellowship.

I won't be selling my iBook for a while, at least - I'm hoping it can stay alive and I can keep it around for emergencies and lending and whatnot. He's not dead yet, and may last for a long time under light use, so I intend to have him go as long as possible.

To get safe mode you're supposed to power up the Mac and hold the shift key starting just after your hear the boot chime, then you release it when you see the grey screen with the Apple logo.

This just made it boot regularly. At least, the screen is still flashing.

boot the thing in FireWire target mode, back up the disk, and then reinstall the OS.

I don't have any kind of external drive for this machine to back anything up onto -- it's technically not ours, but on loan from Apple (as part of our partnership deal with them), so we really only have what it came with.

[eta: I don't think I have anything on here I can't manually reinstall. So maybe wiping it is the best thing. I'm going to call our Apple Rep first and see what he thinks. Thing is, we really can't be without this machine for any length of time, especially this week. Fuck.]

I just played with getting my G5 into Safe Mode and it seems to be a bit tempermental. I finally got it into Safe Mode with a cold start (Not a restart) while holding the shift key down and keeping it down until the "timer wheel" turned up under the Apple logo on the grey boot screen. However, the only reason I knew I was in safe mode is because I have this machine set to boot up to a user login screen and not automatically load my user account and take me to the finder. I couldn't find any indication in the finder that I was in Safe Mode.

Another thought Jessica, if you have the system CD handy try booting from that and see if the problem persists. You can force OS X to boot from the CD by holding down the "C" key while the machine is booting.

However, the only reason I knew I was in safe mode is because I have this machine set to boot up to a user login screen and not automatically load my user account and take me to the finder. I couldn't find any indication in the finder that I was in Safe Mode.

Gaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah.

One more snag I've just discovered -- my Tiger installation DVD is nowhere to be found. I have the original (Panther) DVD that came with the computer, but I have no idea where Tiger went. We may have sent it to the LA office.

Try booting with the Panther CD. This is mainly to see if it's a software issue, or a hardware issue. If the problem persists while booting from the CD then you may have had a video card die on you.

Safe Mode dumps me into Darwin. I can't get to the desktop. (There's a brief flash of what looks like a login screen, and then it goes black except for the command line.)

Frellllllllllllllllllllllllllllll. I guess I'll try booting from the Panther DVD.

On a bit deeper digging, it sounds like you might be getting forced into Single User Mode when you are trying to get into Safe Mode. Try booting to Safe Mode again, and when you get to the command prompt type "exit" and see if it continues the boot sequence.

Try booting to Safe Mode again, and when you get to the command prompt type "exit" and see if it continues the boot sequence.

Nope. The screen goes blue for a second, and then right back into Darwin.

Soooo.... according to them, "one score" equals.... five? Yikes!

No, the site says "One score and -10" 20 minus 10 equals 10.