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Help me out with a G3 iMac?

P

pinto32

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Oct 19, 2003
361
0
PA
About 8 months ago, I bought an old blueberry iMac off of eBay (G3-333, 64MB-RAM, CD-ROM, 6GB-HDD, **unknown VRAM, but its 6MB or under**). For a variety of reasons, I am only now getting around to playing with this thing. Anyway, here's my problem:

When I try to boot it, the chimes sound and everything seems to work fine....but then the Mac OS 9.2 startup screen comes on, with an error message that says "The system software on the startup disk only functions on the original media, not if copied to another drive" and the only option is to restart.

I have tried to boot from eMac restore discs (OS 9.2.2 and 10.1.4) as well as the burned copy of 9.2.1 that the seller sent me. I hold down 'c' as the eMac disc said to, but it always ends up at this same screen.

I admit that I still know relativly little about Macs, so if anyone could give me any help at all, I would really appreciate it.


Also, if I were to want to run OS X (I have 10.1 and 10.3), how much memory would I need to put in to make it useable? It doesnt have to be a speed demon or anything, just enough that I could do basic web surfing and instant messaging.

Thanks for any help anyone can give!
 
It sounds like there's no OS on the drive. That's the first problem. Second problem is that you won't be able to use the eMac restore disks. They know they're not on an eMac. The burned OS 9 disk was probably not made properly. If the previous owner had made an image of the disk and burned the image then it would work. When you just copy the files over and burn the CD it won't be bootable.

So basically you're stuck.

If you're already considering buying OS X, you will solve most of your problems. If you buy 256MB you'll be in good shape (well, okay shape) for OS X. Get Panther--it will be the speediest version of OS X on that machine. Panther will not come with OS 9 for classic use, but once you have OS X you should be able to use the disks you already have. Not that it's the most moral thing to...
 
hmm...I was under the impression that the restore discs would work on any model....are you sure about this?

My copies of 9.2, 10.1, and 10.3 are all on restore discs....(although I didnt bother trying the panther discs because of the obvious memory shortage... Well, if this is true then I suppose I can just get some memory and borrow my friend's panther discs (her iMac came with retail discs, rather than restore discs).
 
Horrortaxi said:
It sounds like there's no OS on the drive.
Click to expand...

If there wasn't an OS on the drive, the OS 9.2 screen wouldn't have come up at all. Incomplete system, perhaps.

It sounds like you're going to need a real CD of OS 9.x or 10.x to get anywhere, not restore CDs. Sorry!
 
how big of hard drive does it have? I know I didn't put osX on my iMac (purple) cause it only had a 6GB hard drive and with any digital photos, etc. it would have been maxed out in no time...wasn't worth my money and time to update. I just waited til I could get a new flatscreen iMac.
 
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