[Sych0]

So I'm on vacation with my digital camera and ibook G4 933 (10.4.7). I fill up one cf card, dump the photos to the ibook, format the card and continue on. At least thats how it's supposed to happen.

This time, after I download the photos, the mac (for the first time in the 2.5 years that I've had it) decides to not boot. I plugged in my brothers ipod, osx froze, and hasnt booted since. It starts to load, but 9/10 times freezes at the blue screen before it loads the pointer and whatnot. Sometimes if i dont turn it on for a few days, I get into the desktop, but it always freezes. I tried fsck -fy - no luck. I tried resetting the vram - no luck. Tried dumping the pram - no luck. Tried removing the extra ram I had - no luck. Tried removing the battery and letting it sit for a day without it - no luck. Tried using other batteries and ac power - no luck.

Now that I'm back home, and have access to more materials, I need to get those photos off the mac. I'll reinstall the os as soon as I get those. I stopped using the card immediately after formatting, so I can recover some off that. I'm using an old app called Restoration, and have gotten some back. Some are missing however, or just not named the typical name anymore. (not to mention it only allows me to copy one file at a time, and with 233, itll be a bit tedius. I'd do it if this is the only option however)

I've tried booting into the ubuntu live cd, but it typically hangs at a white screen.

I CAN get into single user mode on the mac and read the contents of the disc. Is it a full blown command line linux (or bsd)? Is it possible to plug in my usb key, mount it and copy photos to it via single user mode?

I need a way to pull the pics of the memory card, or the ibook and any suggestions to fixing the ibook itself would help. (I don't have access to another mac)

Any other solutions?

update: I'm trying to run the hardware test cd, but it freezes at testing the memory on both quick and extended.

[seanc]

Have you got any other Macs? Have you got a FireWire cable?
If so, start your iBook in Target disk mode by holding the T key after the chime, plug the FireWire cable into the iBook and then into another Mac, your iBooks HD should mount as an external drive on the other Mac at which point you can rescue your data off the drive onto the other Mac.

Good Luck.

[Sych0]

Na, dont have access to another mac. I did try hooking it to my pc anyways, hoping i could use macdrive to get into it, but unfortunately it didnt work. Windows couldnt even see that I'd plugged anything in.

Oddly though, macdrive did read the cd I had in the ibook.

[seanc]

Strange. Got a friend with a Mac? Live near an Apple store?

[Sych0]

No friends with macs, and the nearest apple store is about an hour away. I'm trying to find another way to avoid the drive. If I cant though, I'll have to go.