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iMac G3 thoroughly b0rked

H

Howismydriving

macrumors newbie
Mar 20, 2005
6
0
Wisconsin
Hard drives will often fail but will appear to test fine. Happens all the time. If you have all of your data backed up on your ibook, go out to your local shop, buy an IDE hard drive, pop it in your iMac, format it, and start from there. Just do not get a SATA hard drive, or one larger that 120 GB and you will be fine.
Hard drives will often fail but will appear to test fine. Happens all the time.
 
Timelessblur

Timelessblur

macrumors 65816
Jun 26, 2004
1,086
0
Well I going to guess you computer is pushing if not over 5 year old. Hard drive life spans are 5 years after that they start failing so it not much of a suprised that it starting to fail. Like stated above just get a IDE drive to replace it with to keep it up and running
 
me_94501

me_94501

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 6, 2003
1,009
0
Timelessblur said:
Well I going to guess you computer is pushing if not over 5 year old. Hard drive life spans are 5 years after that they start failing so it not much of a suprised that it starting to fail. Like stated above just get a IDE drive to replace it with to keep it up and running
Click to expand...
It's currently slightly over 3 years old. And the hard drive failing theory doesn't explain why it won't boot off some CDs, unless there's a compound problem going on.

Right now I am installing OS X 10.0. My iMac is making all kinds of noises right now. Not sure if it's from the hard drive or the CD ROM drive.
 
me_94501

me_94501

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 6, 2003
1,009
0
me_94501 said:
It's currently slightly over 3 years old. And the hard drive failing theory doesn't explain why it won't boot off some CDs, unless there's a compound problem going on.

Right now I am installing OS X 10.0. My iMac is making all kinds of noises right now. Not sure if it's from the hard drive or the CD ROM drive.
Click to expand...
10.0 installed without a hitch. The computer refuses to boot beyond a gray screen though. No blinking question mark, just a gray screen.

Never mind--the blinking question mark made its appearance!
 
me_94501

me_94501

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 6, 2003
1,009
0
me_94501 said:
10.0 installed without a hitch. The computer refuses to boot beyond a gray screen though. No blinking question mark, just a gray screen.

Never mind--the blinking question mark made its appearance!
Click to expand...

UPDATE: it successfully booted off of an OS 9 CD. However, the hard drive is not recognized.
UPDATE 2: Restarted and attempted to boot off the OS 9 CD again. It gave me the blinking "?"
 
H

Howismydriving

macrumors newbie
Mar 20, 2005
6
0
Wisconsin
IIRC the cd drive is a slave and the HD is master. If there was a problem on the HD hardware such as drive controller, this could affect the cd drive. Seen it on a PC before.
 
Chappers

Chappers

macrumors 68020
Aug 12, 2003
2,247
1
At home
me_94501 said:
It's currently slightly over 3 years old.
Click to expand...

Are you sure about this cus my iMac G4 800 is nearly 3 years old and the iMac G4s came out 3 years ago. My previous iMac was the iMac DV 400 and that was 6 years ago.
 
me_94501

me_94501

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jan 6, 2003
1,009
0
Howismydriving said:
IIRC the cd drive is a slave and the HD is master. If there was a problem on the HD hardware such as drive controller, this could affect the cd drive. Seen it on a PC before.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the more I think about it, the more I'm beginning to believe the hard drive is at fault here. I seem to remember the system restore CD checking the checksum (or doing something with the checksum) when it gave me the dialog that it couldn't continue.

Chappers, I got the iMac in December 2001, mere weeks before the iMac G4 was introduced.
 
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