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appleman5791

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 23, 2008
10
0
I recently bought an ibook G3 from a guy who said it needed a new OS. when i turned on the computer it has a non back lit screen (which makes it incredibly hard to see) but there is def a folder looking icon with a "?" in it. I bought a copy of OS X tiger from the tech shop at here at KU. How do i go about installing it? b/c when i put the disk in nothing happens. so I dunno how I am suppose to go about installing this. any help would be great! Thanks guys and gals!
 

deadpixels

macrumors 6502a
Oct 30, 2006
913
0
well, besides that the backlight bulb and/or inverter board might be dead, just hope it's not the power to the inverter board from the logic board!!, if you don't hear the disc spinning then you combo drive might be dead too!
 

deadpixels

macrumors 6502a
Oct 30, 2006
913
0
have you tried any other cd? like an audio cd to see if they show up when inserted?? if the dvd drive maybe is bad, you could try to install MacOS booted in target mode when connected with firewire to another mac.
 

heatmiser

macrumors 68020
Dec 6, 2007
2,431
0
First of all, you'll want to make sure you actually have a combo drive, and not a CD drive. Some G3 iBooks can read DVDs while others can only read CDs. If you've got the latter, you'll need Tiger CDs to make an installation (or a FW DVD drive, etc). To be honest, this computer sounds like a lemon.
 

appleman5791

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 23, 2008
10
0
What if I use a USB Diskdrive? maybe then it would read. and the thing is. i cant just put an audio CD bc it has no OS to run anything. And to clarify. the back light flickers on and the shuts off. every time like for 5secs its on
 
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