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Help with a Grape Non Slot Loading iMac G3 (Not booting Mac OS X 10.0 or 10.1)

Hugh

Hugh

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Feb 9, 2003
840
5
Erie, PA
Hi, I have a Grape iMac G3 (non Slot loading CD-ROM drive), and I'm trying to install Mac OS X on it. It has 6GB drive on it, and the CDs boot on other machines (10.0 though 10.3) they will not boot. Now the CD-ROM drive is an non-Apple Drive. I wasn't able to find a Apple iMac G3 drive so I got an IDE CDROM drive for it.

What's happening is it will start to boot, but then fail. I don't know what I am doing wrong, I installed the Firmware update on the Mac OS 9.1 CD that came with Mac OS X 10.0 package but yet it still fails.

I noticed that that there is a updated Firmware for the iMac G3 but that's for the slot loaders and up. Is this machine able to boot Mac OS X? Is it because I am using a Non-Apple Drive? It's a Teac 24x drive.

Thanks for your help! :)

=hugh
 
Double check you have the minimum 64MB RAM (I recommend 128MB for best performance).

My suspicion otherwise is the CD-ROM drive is somehow incompatible.

Specifically, how does the booting 'fail' ?
 
The unit has 198mb of RAM. With Mac OS 10.0 though 10.1 it will start to boot, the CD-ROM will spin down for min then spin back up and act like it's reading some more. Then after a about 3mins I will get a broken system folder icon. For 10.3 It does the same thing, but then I get a red circle with a slash in it.

Thanks for your help! :)

=Hugh
 
Try (if possible) taking it down to 64MB total RAM or 128MB.

Also, if the internal hard drive has nothing on it, boot from a 9.1 CD and re-initialize it.

Ultimately, I still think it's the CD-ROM drive itself.
 
Assuming it's the CD-ROM drive, can I use a Slot loader on this machine? I know it will look terrible. But I am having a hard time finding non slot loading drives... Apple branded ones anyways..

Do you have a brand that you recommend if I can't use Slot loading drives?

Thanks! :)

=Hugh
 
A "CR-175" would be the original Matsushita CD drive. (Bondi blue used CR-173).

However, tray loading drives can be a pain for dirty optics. YMMV

If you can interface a slot-loader drive for the purpose of installing a system, then go for it! ;)
 
MacTech,

I got a NEC CR-175 drive and that did the trick. I can now book Mac OS X 10.0 though 10.3. Though there is rumor that there was a 10.4 CD version that will run on G3's, but I don't know how true that is.

Thanks for your help! :)

=Hugh
 
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