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Not sound like a dumb question, but are you sure there are two in there?  Without much else to go on, it sounds like a 4gb with 2 partitions.  If that's the case and you're booted up with the hard-drive, it's not going to let you do it because it's relying on that drive to be operational.  Use the System Profiler and click on Device Information.  That should tell you what's in there and which scsi buses they're on.  If only one HD appears on Bus 0, then you'll need to use a install cd to initialize and reinstall the OS.

Yeah, I'm positive there are two; I took the case off when I got it to clean it out (I didn't unplug or reposition anything, though).

As far as I know, it was working, and then it wasn't.

Thanks for the replies 

Oh, and I don't necessarily want to reinstall the OS. All I have for OS CD's are the 9.2 and 10.1 CD's that came w/ my Powerbook, neither of which will work on a machine this old.

Also, I don't have the original keyboard, so I'm using an extra Logitech wireless keyboard and mouse that I had. The computer came with a usb card installed, and I jack the combo in thru that; however, OS 8.6 (the current operating system) doesn't load those peripherals soon enough to boot from the OS CD.

What I'm trying to do here is salvage a desktop until I'm in a good enough financial position to buy a new G4 tower. I was in the market for more of a quick fix/tinkering mission without an extra expense on my part. I mean, if I really, really wanted to I could pick up a new IDE hard drive, ATA controller and processor upgrade from Sonnet and a replacement keyboard/mouse from a reseller or eBay.

Oh, BTW, you should be able to sell the 8500 for a measly $100 once you have enough for your G4, so think of it like a temporary placement of money in stasis, rather than sinking cach into obsolete equipment that could get you an Airport card instead. Positive thinking!