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G3 questions

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porozit46

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 4, 2011
18
0
Hello world!
Dear friends, can you please advise me on the following: if my CD-ROM is dead om my iMac G3 is there any way to install operating system on it? Can I write the image of installed operating system to the hard drive (using my Windows computer)? Or maybe the LAN boot?
 
if your iMac is one of the ones with a FireWire port, you can use another computer in FireWire target mode as an external drive for the install. does it have the FireWire port?
 
porozit46 said:
Hello world!
Dear friends, can you please advise me on the following: if my CD-ROM is dead om my iMac G3 is there any way to install operating system on it? Can I write the image of installed operating system to the hard drive (using my Windows computer)? Or maybe the LAN boot?
Click to expand...

if its the tray load model then if you have another mac capible ot run OS X Panther (10.3) you can pull the HDD from the iMac and to it that way i was gonna do this for mine however my iMac G3 died before i could
 
porozit46 said:
Hello world!
Dear friends, can you please advise me on the following: if my CD-ROM is dead om my iMac G3 is there any way to install operating system on it? Can I write the image of installed operating system to the hard drive (using my Windows computer)? Or maybe the LAN boot?
Click to expand...


If you have a Slot loading iMac its easy to replace the optical drive you can even upgrade it to a dvd drive you can find a oem drive out of the Slot loading iMacs on ebay for $10 and the Slot loading imacs have very good harman kardon speakers so if you replace the drive then you can play/rip cds to itunes:)
 
Thank you very much for advices. I have a slot-cd-drive but I'm not absolutely sure that it is dead. I just cannot load from bootable CD to install the operation system to the new HDD drive. I've got this imac without the hard drive and I added the new one, now I want to install the OS but when I press and hold the 'C' button during the startup nothing happens. I cannot buy another cdrom on ebay to check because I live in Ukraine and the shipping here will cost a lot, even if I buy it for 10$.
Please advise another way I can either test the CD-Rom for workability or how to setup the Operating System?

P.S. By the way, can I connect a CD-ROM from a common computer? I see a non-standerd IDE cable (that prorbaly has a DC power in it to power the mac-cdrom) but I can use the standard cable with external DC power?
 
porozit46 said:
Thank you very much for advices. I have a slot-cd-drive but I'm not absolutely sure that it is dead. I just cannot load from bootable CD to install the operation system to the new HDD drive. I've got this imac without the hard drive and I added the new one, now I want to install the OS but when I press and hold the 'C' button during the startup nothing happens. I cannot buy another cdrom on ebay to check because I live in Ukraine and the shipping here will cost a lot, even if I buy it for 10$.
Please advise another way I can either test the CD-Rom for workability or how to setup the Operating System?

P.S. By the way, can I connect a CD-ROM from a common computer? I see a non-standerd IDE cable (that prorbaly has a DC power in it to power the mac-cdrom) but I can use the standard cable with external DC power?
Click to expand...

you can use a ribbon cable on the IDE channel as the Hard Drive i know the 1st gen iMacs will not boot off a slave drive im not sure about the 2nd gen like you have. but i do know that i doubt it will work in the CD Drive in my iMac 333 failed i put a regular laptop drive in and it would not boot from it.
 
Friends! This is something incredible :) I have connected standard CDROM drive from PC to the ribbon cable instead of HDD and it starts from the bootable c! :) Now I need to figure out how to connect it instead of Mac-CDROM because if I connect his new CDROM instead of HDD then I do not know where to connect HDD :) Maybe someone has an idea what to do?
 
porozit46 said:
Friends! This is something incredible :) I have connected standard CDROM drive from PC to the ribbon cable instead of HDD and it starts from the bootable c! :) Now I need to figure out how to connect it instead of Mac-CDROM because if I connect his new CDROM instead of HDD then I do not know where to connect HDD :) Maybe someone has an idea what to do?
Click to expand...

u want to use a 2-device IDE cable. one for a PC will work just fine hook it up same as u hook IDE Drives in a PC the CD-ROM connector is a Propritary Mini IDE connection (same as laptop IDE) if you have a laptop IDE to Desktop IDE if you plug the part youd plug into the Laptop HDD just right on the CD-ROM IDE port u can use it as a standard IDE
 
yes, Leo, thank you very much for the advise. I was thinking the same way. But when I started to connect it the problem arose. The cable for MAC is different from the PC. Firstly it is wide for CD-ROM part and secondly it is without holes but PC one is with 1 hole in the bottom (or upper) row.
Here is the screenshot I've done for better understanding:

45fdbba5d176ba4266543e245d0bb1ac.jpg


----------

Men, how do you think, if I drill a hole and give it a try will it be crazy? :)
 
Believe me or not but it works! :) I made a pinholes on the standard IDE cable with a thin needle heated on fire. Now it starts from the CDROM.
At the moment a new question arose: how to set HDD drive? Must it be slave or Master? And how to set the new CD-ROM slave or master? The original imac cdrom does not have jumpers. So I wonder which of two (slave or master) he was in the beginning.
Also I connect the cd-rom with another end of the cable. If I connect it with normal end it does not work (strange).
So now I think it will be long time of connect-and-try all of the possible combinations. Don't know what distribute of Operating System is better to use now for testing? I need to definitely see the results: both CD-ROM and Hard drive are working and I can install Operating System from CD to the HDD.
 
porozit46 said:
Believe me or not but it works! :) I made a pinholes on the standard IDE cable with a thin needle heated on fire. Now it starts from the CDROM.
At the moment a new question arose: how to set HDD drive? Must it be slave or Master? And how to set the new CD-ROM slave or master? The original imac cdrom does not have jumpers. So I wonder which of two (slave or master) he was in the beginning.
Also I connect the cd-rom with another end of the cable. If I connect it with normal end it does not work (strange).
So now I think it will be long time of connect-and-try all of the possible combinations. Don't know what distribute of Operating System is better to use now for testing? I need to definitely see the results: both CD-ROM and Hard drive are working and I can install Operating System from CD to the HDD.
Click to expand...

it seems that that cable is different because instead of using 2 IDE cables (one ide and one Mini ide like in the 1st gen iMac) this one seems to use standard size IDE cables the reason it is 50 pin and the HDD is 40 pin is because the extra 10 Pins are probably offering the 5V Power required by the CD ROM drive and possible the Analog CD ROM Audio as well. since you are booting off a CD set the CD drive as master and HDD as slave (it can be changed later and should not effect booting) as for a CD Drive you can either buy a firewire enclosure and put a PC Drive in it or you can buy a slot-loading Laptop IDE drive and replace the one in there. Panther works best in iMac G3s Tiger requires more RAM than what the iMac probably has installed
 
Set both drives to be set to cable select. Then put them back on in the same order. Or look at what the hard drive is set to and set the optical drive to be the opposite. If the hard drive is cable select, set the optical drive to cable select.
 
Intell said:
Set both drives to be set to cable select. Then put them back on in the same order. Or look at what the hard drive is set to and set the optical drive to be the opposite. If the hard drive is cable select, set the optical drive to cable select.
Click to expand...

thanks for adding that i didnt think of it in my post
 
Also your one post about tray loading iMacs not booting off of a slave drive is slightly incorrect. Even though they have two IDE ports on the inside, they only have one IDE controller. This means that they can only see and use a maximum of 2 IDE drives. The G4 iMac is also like this, two ports, but one controller. Technically, the optical drive is the slave drive. It's just slaved through the logicabord's traces and not through the cable. Excluding Apple's mobile lineup, I think only the G3 and G4 iMac have this two port - one controller setup out of all of Apple's new world Macs.
 
Intell said:
Also your one post about tray loading iMacs not booting off of a slave drive is slightly incorrect. Even though they have two IDE ports on the inside, they only have one IDE controller. This means that they can only see and use a maximum of 2 IDE drives. The G4 iMac is also like this, two ports, but one controller. Technically, the optical drive is the slave drive. It's just slaved through the logicabord's traces and not through the cable. Excluding Apple's mobile lineup, I think only the G3 and G4 iMac have this two port - one controller setup out of all of Apple's new world Macs.
Click to expand...

ok thanks for clearing that up. I didn't know that. what about having 2 drives on 1 IDE port?
 
Thank you very much for additional advices.
The situation for now is following:
I have managed to connect both CD-Drive and HDD and it is starting booting from the CD. I did not manage to start the installation of MAC OS because: first it is loading but then it shows the crossed ring instead of a biten apple. So I decided to launch Linux Ubuntu Live CD. It is loading fine and I see the loaded operating system but I do not see the HDD mounted although it is spinning.
I wonder: is there any way I can diagnose that the hard drive is seen by mac? Not only from Linux but by any solution? I have downloaded together with MAC OS boot cd an Apple Hardware Test iso. Can it help to find out if my hard is connected correctly and can be seen by mac? (Directly saying all I want is something like BIOS on PC computer, where you can go and see hat devices are connected at the moment, I hope you understand what I mean). Thank you for helping me!
 
porozit46 said:
Thank you very much for additional advices.
The situation for now is following:
I have managed to connect both CD-Drive and HDD and it is starting booting from the CD. I did not manage to start the installation of MAC OS because: first it is loading but then it shows the crossed ring instead of a biten apple. So I decided to launch Linux Ubuntu Live CD. It is loading fine and I see the loaded operating system but I do not see the HDD mounted although it is spinning.
I wonder: is there any way I can diagnose that the hard drive is seen by mac? Not only from Linux but by any solution? I have downloaded together with MAC OS boot cd an Apple Hardware Test iso. Can it help to find out if my hard is connected correctly and can be seen by mac? (Directly saying all I want is something like BIOS on PC computer, where you can go and see hat devices are connected at the moment, I hope you understand what I mean). Thank you for helping me!
Click to expand...

with ubuntu u have to mount internal HDDs manually
 
Add:
I tried this Apple Hardware Test CD. It is starting but says that it is not compatible with my machine.
When I start MacOS X 10.2 installation CD it frist shows Apple, and then the cross-ring:

4e1b55cf5b95aaa69596fbe00b5cec2f.jpg
 
porozit46 said:
Add:
I tried this Apple Hardware Test CD. It is starting but says that it is not compatible with my machine.
When I start MacOS X 10.2 installation CD it frist shows Apple, and then the cross-ring:

Image
Click to expand...

i no next to nothing about Jaguar but are u using gray discs? if so thats your problem ive gotten that same thing making Hackintoshes seems that the OS you are trying to install is not compatible with the OS and im not sure about your mac but u may need a Firmware update to install OS X
 
I downloaded this MAC OS 10.2 instalaltion CD from torrents and they say it is for iMac G3 500 MHZ including (I have 500 Mhz version).

Regarding Linux Ubuntu, here is what I get when use command "fdisk -l":

5374483ab40b31349fbb8d523cee8571.jpg


P.S. BTW, I thought Linux should mount partitions automatically, especially when they are FAT32/NTFS partiotions (which is my case because I took this HDD from my old PC computer for testing this mac)
 
porozit46 said:
I downloaded this MAC OS 10.2 instalaltion CD from torrents and they say it is for iMac G3 500 MHZ including (I have 500 Mhz version).

Regarding Linux Ubuntu, here is what I get when use command "fdisk -l":

Image

P.S. BTW, I thought Linux should mount partitions automatically, especially when they are FAT32/NTFS partiotions (which is my case because I took this HDD from my old PC computer for testing this mac)
Click to expand...

Sorry my friend if that is not a legit copy of osx, you will not get much help.
 
Add: I have burnt Mac OS 9.2.2 on CD and now it is statrted fine and I'm starting the installation. Hope it will find the HDD and also will allow me to partition it :)
 
LeoTheLion89 said:
i thought having the CD Drive and HDD on the same controller was bad for preformance
Click to expand...

It can lead to poor performance if both drives are being used at the same time. But if one drive is sitting idle, an empty optical drive, there is little to no decrease.
 
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