Help with an old PowerPC eMac

[TyTheChosenOne]

So, I have an old eMac PowerPC that was running 10.4.11, but something happened when trying to boot classic mode, and it now wont boot at all. When i turn it on, all I get is a folder with a question mark that blinks for ever. I've already tried to boot it in single user mode, but it wont, and also have made a boot disk (since I dont have the original) and it wont work as well. Any suggestions?

 

[redheeler]

Sounds like the hard drive has failed. Does it spit out the boot disk?

 

[ctmpkmlec4]

Try resetting the PRAM, or holding the X key when booting up the eMac. IIRC, hold the X key forces it to boot the OS X installation.

 

[TyTheChosenOne]

Try resetting the PRAM, or holding the X key when booting up the eMac. IIRC, hold the X key forces it to boot the OS X installation.

I already reset the PRAM and held X upon booting, but neither seemed to help.

 

[ctmpkmlec4]

See redheeler's post.

 

[Altemose]

Try holding Option at boot to get it into the boot selector. See if either OS appears.

 

[TyTheChosenOne]

It doesn't spit the disk out, rather just keeps acting as if its searching... It did that for an hour or so, before I decided to turn it off. I don't think its the Hard Drive, though. I can pull up the manual boot menu and it'll still say that there is the 10.4.11 drive I can boot to, but when I do, I just get the mac classic floppy disk with the question mark for eternity

 

[bunnspecial]

If "X" during booting won't boot it, you do indeed likely have a dead hard drive. You might be lucky and find that it's something simple like a ribbon cable that has worked loose, but all of these HDDs are getting up in age and many of them really are ticking time bombs.

If you can get it booted off an OS X install disk, you can go into Disk Utilities from there and see if the drive appears. If it does but is not mounted, you might be able to salvage it by repairing permissions or repairing the disk. If it doesn't appear in Disk Utilities or won't repair, it's likely toast.

 

[weckart]

Boot with a Tiger DVD/CD and look at verifying/repairing the volume.

 

[mikiotty]

Actually, he said "floppy with question mark". A dead hard drive would show a folder with the question mark on that particular Mac I guess...
I think there's an issue with the classic system folder he tried to boot. Now the Mac keeps searching for it, even when you manually select the 10.4.11 boot disk (my G3 iBook Dual USB did that once, but I can't remember how I solved it).

Try to boot in Open Firmware (alt+cmd+o+f as soon as you hear the bong, keep pressed until you see the Open Firmware screen) and type those lines (press enter after each one):

reset-nvram

reset-all

The Mac will reboot and hopefully boot in OS X. If it doesn't, your install is probably messed up, and configured to boot into the OS 9 system folder. You'll probably have to reinstall the OS if that's the case (assuming you can boot into an OS install CD, sounds like your optical drive is toast).

 

[MatthewLTL]

I was having this problem for awhile on my PowerMac. Putting in a boot disc will boot the computer within seconds. Of course if you don't have a Combo of SuperDrive in your eMac it's not gonna boot. My eMac came with a CD-ROM Drive which made it a PITA to install anything on it. I had to put in a DVD Drive then I eventually bought a Apple SuperDrive for it that was from a PowerMac G5.