Beige G3 Won't boot from CD

[SirFoxx]

For the life of me, I cannot get my beige g3 to boot from a retail copy of Mac OS9. I need to install it so can see if one of my SCSI drives is good or not. I have tried resetting pram via key combo, pulling the battery, and with OF. I have also tried the cuda reset. All with no results. I noticed that the disc drive won't really spin up with the retail disc, but it will spin up with a disc I burned that has 9.2.1 on it, but won't launch. It just stays spinning with no results. All I get is the flashing "?" on the floppy symbol. I have tried both an "external" scsi and ide drive that I have laying around, same results (by external I mean plugging a cable into the mobo and draping it outside the case). I have a 7300/200 laying around but when it turns on, my monitor says it is out of range. I also have a 6115CD, but the mobo is dying on it, and not really worth trying to get to work. Is there anything else I could try to get my beige g3 to boot from the CD?

 

[bunnspecial]

Is your CD-ROM drive an Apple OEM drive? As I understand it, the beige G3s need a drive with Apple ROM in order to boot from the CD drive.

 

[SirFoxx]

Yes, the drive in the g3 is an Apple OEM drive along with the SCSI drive. The external CD drive I tried was an old Hewlett Packard CD writer plus drive, so I now know that drive won't work.

 

[SirFoxx]

Today I found a disk tools image for PPC from apple, and I copied it over to a floppy disk, put it in the G3, and when it turned on, it gave the happy mac icon, then immediately spit the floppy out. I have tried making multiple boot CD's, and have had no luck so far. Are there any tips or tricks that may be of use?

On a side note, the only way I can copy a .img over to a floppy is by using the terminal. Whenever I try to use the disk utility, I either get a broken pipe error, or a repeating error that says that the image needs to be scanned before restore, which I have done multiple times. Ugh, it seems like everything apple I own is dying or broken >.<

 

[comda]

IM not a 100% percent sure you are correct on that one bunnspecial. I am the owner of a Beige power macintosh. The desktop model. When i bought it a few years back the previous owner had been upgraded. NO longer was there a tiny 4gb hard drive but now there is a 20, and the original cd Rom is now a Cd Rw. After i recieved it i erased the OS 9, installed OSX 10.2.8 and then back to OS 9 later lol. It booted from the disks. ANd its not an OEM apple drive.

 

[Intell]

I don't think a G3 can be booted from a floppy disc.

 

[SirFoxx]

I guess what I need to know is:

1. What format should the CD/HDD be?
2. Can I use a non-apple branded CD Drive?
3. What files should be on the CD?
4. How do I make it bootable, and do I need external software to do so?

My only working mac ATM is my macbook running 10.6.8, which also has Macfuse and fusehfs installed. (I managed to install fusehfs before the installer was corrupted on the website.)

Just found out, the OS 9 "CD" I bought from ebay is apparently a DVD. Should have seen that one >.<

 

[bunnspecial]

If you had another PPC Mac I'd suggest doing the install from there and transplanting the drive, although it sounds like that's not an option. You really need OS X 10.4 or earlier to correctly format a drive for OS 9.

 

[Intell]

If you had another PPC Mac I'd suggest doing the install from there and transplanting the drive, although it sounds like that's not an option. You really need OS X 10.4 or earlier to correctly format a drive for OS 9.

10.5 can correctly install the OS 9 drivers to a hard drive as long as that drive is not an internal drive in a PowerPC Mac or Intell Mac that cannot natively boot into OS 9.

 

[bunnspecial]

10.5 can correctly install the OS 9 drivers to a hard drive as long as that drive is not an internal drive in a PowerPC Mac or Intell Mac that cannot natively boot into OS 9.

(I'm working on memory in saying this).

I was formatting some drives the other day using 10.5 in my Quicksilver, which is an OS 9-capable computer. In 10.4 and earlier, disk utility has a check box under the partition tab to install the OS 9 drivers. I don't recall finding such an option under 10.5, although it's entirely possible that I simply wasn't looking in the correct place.