I had a Mac Mini sitting around the house collecting dust, so I thought I'd boot it up to have a small computer in my room. When I booted it up it started with the standard "bung" sound, but then it showed a blank grey screen. After a minute or so the screen turned to black, then came back with the same grey screen, but with a blue folder in the middle flashing a question mark, then the old Mac two faces logo, and continued to switch indefinitely.
I decided that the OS had been corrupted, and needed to be reinstalled, which I thought was not going to be a big deal. I was wrong. I put the Mac Mini OS Install CD into the drive, and it sounded like it was running it, but the same grey screen followed by the one with the folder happened again. So then I tried to force boot from disc by holding "c" on start up. This did not work, then I tried using the Open Firmware to force boot from disc using
boot cd:9,\\:tbxi Which did not work, so I tried
boot cd:9,\\System\Library\CoreServices\BootX Which also did not work.
Both said that it was unable to open.
I then tried to eject the disc so I could try my other install discs MacBook Pro, but the drive would not eject, and I had to open the Mini up to get the disc physically out of the disc tray. When I tried to do the install with my other install disc it did virtually the same thing with identical error messages. The only way I could get it to do anything different was to hold option on reboot, and the screen would go blue with the old school clock spinning as the cursor, a button that had a arrow pointing to the right (like "next") and a button with an arrow that looked like a "refresh." "Next" didn't work even after multiple "refresh"es, even though clicking refresh definitely started whatever process it was doing over again.
Any suggestions on how I can get an OS onto this Mac? I'm thinking it might be the optical drive, so I might swap one over from another one in the house.
Thanks in advance,
Peter
I decided that the OS had been corrupted, and needed to be reinstalled, which I thought was not going to be a big deal. I was wrong. I put the Mac Mini OS Install CD into the drive, and it sounded like it was running it, but the same grey screen followed by the one with the folder happened again. So then I tried to force boot from disc by holding "c" on start up. This did not work, then I tried using the Open Firmware to force boot from disc using
boot cd:9,\\:tbxi Which did not work, so I tried
boot cd:9,\\System\Library\CoreServices\BootX Which also did not work.
Both said that it was unable to open.
I then tried to eject the disc so I could try my other install discs MacBook Pro, but the drive would not eject, and I had to open the Mini up to get the disc physically out of the disc tray. When I tried to do the install with my other install disc it did virtually the same thing with identical error messages. The only way I could get it to do anything different was to hold option on reboot, and the screen would go blue with the old school clock spinning as the cursor, a button that had a arrow pointing to the right (like "next") and a button with an arrow that looked like a "refresh." "Next" didn't work even after multiple "refresh"es, even though clicking refresh definitely started whatever process it was doing over again.
Any suggestions on how I can get an OS onto this Mac? I'm thinking it might be the optical drive, so I might swap one over from another one in the house.
Thanks in advance,
Peter
