Hi everyone,
I got a iMac G3 today (one of the original Rev. A's with the tray loading drive, 233mhz, 160MB RAM, etc).
It was able to boot fine until I upgraded the hard drive with an 80GB Seagate. The drive had OS X Tiger preinstalled on it, and it ended up booting the first time. The original drive had OS X Panther on it.
The second time, it will hang at a gray apple (no spinning wheel) and the Mac does nothing. I'm fine with not having OS X, but I would ideally like to install OS 9 on it. I put in an OS 9 retail CD (9.2.1 specifically) and I cannot get the machine to boot from the disk. Holding down C does nothing, in fact I cannot get the machine to respond to any keyboard commands.
I was able to get it to boot into Open Firmware by holding down the interrupt button, and from there I tried to boot from the CD.
When I enter "boot cd" it says:
"eject cd DISK-LABEL: read of block0 failed
can't OPEN: cd"
I did not test the drive prior to the upgrades so I have no idea if it works, but the seller claimed the entire machine worked. When I put in the OS 9 CD on boot, it's almost like the drive isn't even spinning. Weird.
Any suggestions or help? It would be much appreciated!
Thanks
(i've also tried resetting PRAM and open firmware, did nothing)
UPDATE:
I put back in the known working HDD with Panther, and it boots again. What it looks like is that either the CD drive isn't spinning or else the lens is not working. I inserted the OS 9 CD and nothing happened. I ejected the drive and you can tell it's moved from it's original position, but it won't mount or boot from the drive. I also tried an Audio CD and had the same results.
I guess the cd drive is toast?
EDIT: CD drive fixed, now wondering about the whining noise it's making while it's off.
I got a iMac G3 today (one of the original Rev. A's with the tray loading drive, 233mhz, 160MB RAM, etc).
It was able to boot fine until I upgraded the hard drive with an 80GB Seagate. The drive had OS X Tiger preinstalled on it, and it ended up booting the first time. The original drive had OS X Panther on it.
The second time, it will hang at a gray apple (no spinning wheel) and the Mac does nothing. I'm fine with not having OS X, but I would ideally like to install OS 9 on it. I put in an OS 9 retail CD (9.2.1 specifically) and I cannot get the machine to boot from the disk. Holding down C does nothing, in fact I cannot get the machine to respond to any keyboard commands.
I was able to get it to boot into Open Firmware by holding down the interrupt button, and from there I tried to boot from the CD.
When I enter "boot cd" it says:
"eject cd DISK-LABEL: read of block0 failed
can't OPEN: cd"
I did not test the drive prior to the upgrades so I have no idea if it works, but the seller claimed the entire machine worked. When I put in the OS 9 CD on boot, it's almost like the drive isn't even spinning. Weird.
Any suggestions or help? It would be much appreciated!
Thanks
(i've also tried resetting PRAM and open firmware, did nothing)
UPDATE:
I put back in the known working HDD with Panther, and it boots again. What it looks like is that either the CD drive isn't spinning or else the lens is not working. I inserted the OS 9 CD and nothing happened. I ejected the drive and you can tell it's moved from it's original position, but it won't mount or boot from the drive. I also tried an Audio CD and had the same results.
I guess the cd drive is toast?
EDIT: CD drive fixed, now wondering about the whining noise it's making while it's off.
Last edited: