Which PowerBook G4 model? Narrowing it down to Titanium vs Aluminium
would be a start. Its serial number would be better: it is probably
printed inside the battery compartment.
The first five characters are enough to determine the manufacture date,
which should identify the model. The third character is the last digit
of the year of manufacture, the next two are the week number. For
example, the serial number of my PowerBook G4 (DVI) starts with QT221,
which indicates it was manufactured in 2002 week 21.
Your friend's PowerBook G4 is probably too new to be supported by your
'universal' 9.2 boot disc. The last few generations of Macs which could
boot Mac OS 9 require a model-specific 9.2.2 disc which came with the
computer.
Looking through MacTracker, only the original PowerBook G4 (Jan 2001 to
Oct 2001) would be old enough to boot from 9.2. The Gigabit Ethernet
model (Oct 2001) requires 9.2.1. All later Titanimum models (Apr 2002 or
later) require 9.2.2, probably model-specific. Aluminium models can't
boot Mac OS 9 at all, only use it via the Classic environment from Mac
OS X 10.0 through 10.4.
There is a small possibility that Apple can still sell replacement
install media for the computer, given its serial number. I don't know
whether they still do that for models outside the five to seven year
hardware support window.
Failing that, you may need to find someone who has the same model and
give you a copy of their disc, or use Mac OS X.
--
David Empson
dem.@actrix.gen.nz