Panther 10.3 killed my iMac DV?! Urgent help needed.

[gotohamish]

Hi

I bought Panther for my iMac DV, and I started it up on the Panther CD, went thru the installation introduction, and it gave me an error saying it wasn't eligible on this machine - I'm guessing it was the firmware, but I clicked too fast and it disappeared. It began to reboot the machine, but hung on the spinning shut down logo.

So... I force rebooted, and now it chimes (sometimes) then waits a few seconds and shuts down. I've got the CD out, held down every key combination, zapped PRAM (when it lets me, not often) and just powers off.

What have I done? How can it be fixed? HELP!

[mischief]

Being that you interrupted the installation sequence your drive may be irretrevable. However you should still be able to boot the machine.

Some questions before I get into a specific how... Answering them will tell me how to help you.

What OS's were installed before you began?

OS X.0?

OS X.1?

OS X.2?

OS 9.1?

OS 9.2?

Current OS 9 and OS X revisions?

Do you have another boot CD? (preferrably a Mac OS X.2 and/or Norton Utilities (with 9.2 or later).)


Do you have the original CD packet that came with your Mac?

Did you select to do a clean install or an upgrade?

and finally: How much RAM do you have installed?

[gotohamish]

Originally posted by mischief
Being that you interrupted the installation sequence your drive may be irretrevable. However you should still be able to boot the machine.

Some questions before I get into a specific how... Answering them will tell me how to help you.

What OS's were installed before you began?

OS X.0?

OS X.1?

OS X.2?

OS 9.1?

OS 9.2?

Current OS 9 and OS X revisions?

Do you have another boot CD? (preferrably a Mac OS X.2 and/or Norton Utilities (with 9.2 or later).)


Do you have the original CD packet that came with your Mac?

Did you select to do a clean install or an upgrade?

and finally: How much RAM do you have installed?

Was running OS 9.0 solely. It doesn't boot from ANY cd. I've tried everything. It doesn't even read the CD or get far enough. Even with the original CDs from the box.

I selected a totally clean install, to wipe and replace everything.

I had 192MB of RAM in. The RAM worked fine in OS 9. I also tried it with just 128MB stick in. No good.

AAGH!

[Exlaxxboy]

10.3 needs OS X to upgrade sorry

[gotohamish]

Originally posted by Exlaxxboy
10.3 needs OS X to upgrade sorry

What? IT WAS A CLEAN INSTALL!!!!!

I'm not that dumb!

[mischief]

Originally posted by gotohamish
Was running OS 9.0 solely. It doesn't boot from ANY cd. I've tried everything. It doesn't even read the CD or get far enough. Even with the original CDs from the box.

I selected a totally clean install, to wipe and replace everything.

I had 192MB of RAM in. The RAM worked fine in OS 9. I also tried it with just 128MB stick in. No good.

AAGH!

Put ONLY the 64 MB chip that came with your machine in and try it again. The Apple RAM speed spec changed between OS's. In OS 9 you'd be fine with 3-3-3 RAM but OS X.2 and above will excrete their eyes if you don't use 3-2-3 RAM. It's kind of lame but the Apple installed RAM meets the new spec.

If you still have trouble call 1-800-SOS- APPLE or visit an Apple Store near you.... Or e-mail me.;)

[Sun Baked]

Hopefully it wasn't a firmware upgrade interrupt.

You may want to disconnect the HD and see if it'll boot from the CD, if so everythings OK HW wise.

If you mess up the install enough, it will hang the machine bad enough where you can't key combo out or do much else.

The bootROM (aka firmware) immediately will checks for a ROM file to continue the boot process, if it or the drive is mess up it'll hang the machine. You'll need to take the "bad" drive out of the loop to test the machine and/or get it to boot to CD.

[gotohamish]

Originally posted by Sun Baked
Hopefully it wasn't a firmware upgrade interrupt.

You may want to disconnect the HD and see if it'll boot from the CD, if so everythings OK HW wise.

If you mess up the install enough, it will hang the machine bad enough where you can't key combo out or do much else.

The bootROM (aka firmware) immediately will checks for a ROM file to continue the boot process, if it or the drive is mess up it'll hang the machine. You'll need to take the "bad" drive out of the loop to test the machine and/or get it to boot to CD.

Thanks - I'll try it in the morning, and post back. In the meantime, any other suggestions would be amazing.

Has anyone discovered if it's possible the Panther Install CD would do the firmware upgrade for you?

[kenbaby]

I found one of the unused iMacs (iMac DV slot-loading Sage) at my company and tried to install Panther. It had OS X 10.1 and OS 9.2.2 on it when I found it. But it didn't even read the CD.

I thought it was CD-ROM drive that caused the trouble so I clean-installed Panther on it from my Powerbook 550mhz using "Target disk mode." Installation was fine and it still runs on my laptop but not on the iMac.

I'm going to take off the added RAM modules and try it again.

[phreaker57x]

Isn't Panther shipped in a DVD? That's how Jaguar came for me.... (a DVD for the system, and a CD for the hardware test)

[whocares]

Originally posted by phreaker57x
Isn't Panther shipped in a DVD? That's how Jaguar came for me.... (a DVD for the system, and a CD for the hardware test)

Nope! Comes on 4 CDs + Xcode if you buy it seperatly from a computer. A lot of OS X supported Macs don't have DVD drives... Think early iMacs, eMacs, iBooks, ...

[kenbaby]

The other iMac DV special edition snow (500 Mhz G3) perfectly works. So I switched the memory modules with the iMac DV Sage (450Mhz G3) and what happened was...

The snow iMaC doesn't load Panther. It keeps thinking and the Sage iMac did work instead.

It's got to be something to do with the memory module I have on the Sage iMac.

[SylverBullet]

What did you do to rsolve your problem? Is your iMac born again?;)

[jane doe]

In the read me that comes with Panther it says to make sure the Firmware is updated before installing....

This does not appear to have been done. Plug in an external display and see if you get video. If not then you can try to boot to the OS 9 disk.

What ever you do, don't try resetting the logic board, you could loose video permanently

[mark_burnt]

This exact same problem is happening to me now!!! But on a Powerbook G4.

Won't boot from any system disk, taken everything out/off as per apple helpline advice, still no joy.

What next.

I want to format the disk afresh and start over, can I do this without booting up from a system disk??

Please help.

[jane doe]

Your not having the same problem as above... it looks the same but is not.

Try resetting the power management. How to do this is in your user manual.

[mark_burnt]

Just tried that, thanks, but no joy. Same as.

Could the install disk be corrupt?...or is that a long shot.

9 times out of 10 when I try and force it to boot from the cd, it ejects and I get the flashing ?.

[jane doe]

remove anything that is added, including ram, then try again..... It's unlikely that the disk is bad

[mark_burnt]

Only thing left to unplug is the airport card which is locate deep within it's bowels....and under star screws.

Do you really think that will help, I already oicked the ram out hours ago.

Yours in increasing desperation.

[jane doe]

you must have a 17"

it might be a good idea to call apple at this point

[mark_burnt]

That I do and I am currently on hold ;)

Thanks.

[SylverBullet]

Just a second plz...

What can be done to restore the previous firmware?

Here's is what happenned : I tryed to install 10.3 without performing the firmware update before :(

What can i do now? my iMac looks dead.

I Have the gong, the hdd starts, i hear the screen static effect (before it starts) but the computer seems to go in sleep mode. I cant boot on any CD.

I tried without success to:

- reset Pram
- hold 15 sec the power button
- hold the reset button
- change the batery

Help me plz !!!
:confused:

[jane doe]

I would take it to have some one look at it. it might be fixable.

[janey]

Originally posted by SylverBullet
- reset Pram
- hold 15 sec the power button
- hold the reset button
- change the batery

how bout resetting power management, booting up into open firmware mode and fiddling around with things (reset nvram, etc.)...

bizarre problems...good thing you guys are calling AppleCare, I would really like to know what this is and how to fix it :)

[SylverBullet]

How do you do that?

[SylverBullet]

done that, no result - no display

[mark_burnt]

It's true....OS X 10.3 killed my Powerbook G4.

Totally firmwared up, went for a clean install with format to OS extended.

Install froze part way through, now won't boot (flashing ?) won't boot off cd, won't let me install system again, done all the : remove ram, airport, reset-all, nvram, pram, little power button.

So now have to take it to an apple dealer to fix, this is turning out to be an expensive operating system!!! A bit mad actually that it is going to cost 'me' money to sort out!

Can't take it in until monday so anybody have any bright ideas between now and then, I would love to hear them.

[DarkNovaMatter]

Well I don't know if you have tried it yet, but have you inserted the cd- then shut down (aka no power supplied to imac), then boot up normally with holding the option button? If you can do that open firmware will act like a startup disk manager. I did this when my cube was being upgraded, and OS9 was messing up my whole disk (ati driver manager, also had X partitions). Also most slot loading drives eject when the boot screen comes up- I use this to not have to play games of when to insert the cd at the right time.

If you installed an open firmware password then it will come up with a screen with a lock and line that you can type your password into- if not it will simply be all disks showing up and then you simply pick one and click the right pointing arrow to continue. Hopefully this helps you!

[mark_burnt]

Thanks for that, I will try that again, however I did try that on the phone with mac support and no drives appeared, just a curly arrow and a straight arrow.

This is on a Powerbook G4 aswell.

Is there anyway to format the hard drive from the firmware login prompt, y'know the place where you type set-defaults, etc???

Yours in needy help.

Mark

[mark_burnt]

Ok anybody who is reading this thread.

I have semi found a solution.

The issue was that the install disk one was only appearing once every 10 or so trys. When it did launch I was trying to make a clean installation and format the hard drive at the same time.

So early this morning I tried a minimal installation without formatting the hard disk. And it worked!!!

I now have the system on my machine, which is a start. Exactly how much I trust it, that's a different matter.

What is the best course of action now to do a full low level format of the hard drive to make it totally spangly clean, empty, new then reinstall. Or do you think I even have to do this, now that the machine boots, runs and appears on the face of things to work.

BTW, I'm writing this using it!