(2001) iMac G3 Slot-loading 500 MHz wont boot

[iLeet]

Hello, today I ended up buying an iMac G3 (PowerMac2,2 Although the serial number matches to: OBS,iMac (Summer 2001)) off a guy for $25 since I like Apple products and wanted to revive this one.

It has Mac OS X (10.3.8) on it and it booted up perfectly fine and everything worked. Anyways I started noticing that some of the letters in sentences or buttons in the OS were missing at different times. When I was trying to install Diablo 2 and look up problems this happened:

However it continued working. Then out of no where, Mac crashed. I got black text at the top left saying the it had crashed. Now whenever I try to boot it up I get "You need to restart your computer" in 4 different languages. I tried CMD + S and it just said "panic: We are hanging here..."
So I went out and burned OS X 10.4 onto a DVD, and it just spits out the dvd and any cds I have tried. I tried booting from a usb with the option on startup, and open firmware and it just gave me errors. When I boot up in safe mode it restarts randomly during boot. And when I boot using safe mode with info (cmd + shift + v) it hangs at

IP packet filtering initialized, divert enabled, rule-based forwarding enabled, default to accept, logging disabled
IPv6 packet filtering initialized, default to accept, logging disabled
IP Firewall loaded

So now i'm stuck, I have no idea how I can get this machine working again

Any help would be appreciated
Thanks

 

[California]

Hello, today I ended up buying an iMac G3 (PowerMac2,2 Although the serial number matches to: OBS,iMac (Summer 2001)) off a guy for $25 since I like Apple products and wanted to revive this one.

It has Mac OS X (10.3.8) on it and it booted up perfectly fine and everything worked. Anyways I started noticing that some of the letters in sentences or buttons in the OS were missing at different times. When I was trying to install Diablo 2 and look up problems this happened: Image

However it continued working. Then out of no where, Mac crashed. I got black text at the top left saying the it had crashed. Now whenever I try to boot it up I get "You need to restart your computer" in 4 different languages. I tried CMD + S and it just said "panic: We are hanging here..."
So I went out and burned OS X 10.4 onto a DVD, and it just spits out the dvd and any cds I have tried. I tried booting from a usb with the option on startup, and open firmware and it just gave me errors. When I boot up in safe mode it restarts randomly during boot. And when I boot using safe mode with info (cmd + shift + v) it hangs at

So now i'm stuck, I have no idea how I can get this machine working again

Any help would be appreciated
Thanks

My first thought is an aging, failing hard drive corrupted the OS.

Try starting it up in target disc mode and run Disk Utility through another mac, preferably one with Snow Leopard or Leopard or even Tiger if you have another mac that old.

I question the hard drive because, unless someone has dropped the imac, they are pretty much work horses.

Oh and also swap out the ram. Failing ram could do the above, too.

 

[iLeet]

My first thought is an aging, failing hard drive corrupted the OS.

Try starting it up in target disc mode and run Disk Utility through another mac, preferably one with Snow Leopard or Leopard or even Tiger if you have another mac that old.

I question the hard drive because, unless someone has dropped the imac, they are pretty much work horses.

Oh and also swap out the ram. Failing ram could do the above, too.

Yeah I tried switching the ram it didn't do anything, So i guess it may be the hard drive, I'm going to try tdm when I get a old firewire cable. Also in other news, when I unplug the keyboard it doesn't give me an error but it just never gets past the apple logo and it keeps spinning. But when I plug it back in, it panics, but in the safe mode it never shows any kind of error with the keyboard. Now is it possible to install OS X on it (If hdd is the problem) through firewire?

I can also access Single User Mode with cmd + s when I unplug the keyboard right away but when I plug it back in, again it panics. But Hard Drive sounds the most probable cause.

 

[iLeet]

bump .

 

[SuperCompu2]

Now is it possible to install OS X on it (If hdd is the problem) through firewire?

Very! If this is a Summer 2001 I would recommend Tiger with 1GB RAM if possible for best use. Panther is OK, but you'll get a lot more compatibility with newer applications and web standards with Tiger.

All you need to do for an install through FW is hook up the iMac to another mac while in TDM, and run the installer on the other Mac. I would find an older PPC mac to do this with, because some Intel machines won't run the installer for older OS X versions, and 10.4 Disks only ever came out for PPC.

It is also possible that your iMac does not have a DVD drive (I used to own a few of these, and most had CD-RW drives), and would spit out a DVD simply because it couldn't read it.

 

[iLeet]

Very! If this is a Summer 2001 I would recommend Tiger with 1GB RAM if possible for best use. Panther is OK, but you'll get a lot more compatibility with newer applications and web standards with Tiger.

All you need to do for an install through FW is hook up the iMac to another mac while in TDM, and run the installer on the other Mac. I would find an older PPC mac to do this with, because some Intel machines won't run the installer for older OS X versions, and 10.4 Disks only ever came out for PPC.

It is also possible that your iMac does not have a DVD drive (I used to own a few of these, and most had CD-RW drives), and would spit out a DVD simply because it couldn't read it.

Hmm Ok makes sense. Thanks for the info, I'm still thinking on how I'm going to run the installer since I'm on Mountain Lion. Ive been trying to get Snow Leopard onto my External Hard Drive (USB) And have had no luck But Thanks it really helps a lot

 

[California]

Very! If this is a Summer 2001 I would recommend Tiger with 1GB RAM if possible for best use. Panther is OK, but you'll get a lot more compatibility with newer applications and web standards with Tiger.

All you need to do for an install through FW is hook up the iMac to another mac while in TDM, and run the installer on the other Mac. I would find an older PPC mac to do this with, because some Intel machines won't run the installer for older OS X versions, and 10.4 Disks only ever came out for PPC.

It is also possible that your iMac does not have a DVD drive (I used to own a few of these, and most had CD-RW drives), and would spit out a DVD simply because it couldn't read it.

Tiger 10.4 came on the 2006 and 2007 Intel Macs. Leopard 10.5 didn't come out until 2007

 

[SuperCompu2]

Tiger 10.4 came on the 2006 and 2007 Intel Macs. Leopard 10.5 didn't come out until 2007

True, but there were no retail disks for Intel 10.4, thus the only 10.4 disks that aren't machine specific are PowerPC only.

It may be possible to make a bootable image on a firewire disk of the Tiger install DVD, but I'm not sure. Whether the iMac chooses to boot from it or not is the main point of concern.

Another thing you may try is putting the Intel machine in TDM, and loading the Tiger DVD in the machine while hooked up via FireWire. This may make the DVD show up on the iMac's screen (if my memory serves me correctly), effectively sharing the DVD drive of the Intel machine with the iMac.

 

[California]

True, but there were no retail disks for Intel 10.4, thus the only 10.4 disks that aren't machine specific are PowerPC only.

It may be possible to make a bootable image on a firewire disk of the Tiger install DVD, but I'm not sure. Whether the iMac chooses to boot from it or not is the main point of concern.

Another thing you may try is putting the Intel machine in TDM, and loading the Tiger DVD in the machine while hooked up via FireWire. This may make the DVD show up on the iMac's screen (if my memory serves me correctly), effectively sharing the DVD drive of the Intel machine with the iMac.

That's a good point, I wonder if there were 10.4.7 retail Tiger discs that came with Intel Code. I know that the late 2005 PPC machines all came with grey oem discs of 10.4.3; Tiger was in its final days when the Intel machines came out in mid-late 2006.

 

[iLeet]

Tried installing Tiger

Failed with :

bomFileError 2: No such file or directory -./System/Library/Fonts/Japenese language/again.otf
Install failed: Some files for Essentials may not have been written correctly.

 

[Intell]

Looks like you could have a faulty hard drive, optical drive, disc, or IDE cable. I'd start with the disc, then hard drive.

 

[California]

Tried installing Tiger

Failed with :

bomFileError 2: No such file or directory -./System/Library/Fonts/Japenese language/again.otf
Install failed: Some files for Essentials may not have been written correctly.

I have a 30gig hard drive that will work perfectly in your iMac. it was pulled out of a Powermac back in the day. I think it actually has Tiger on it. Let me know if you want it