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iMac G3 DV SE: Screwed up IDE?

christiann

christiann

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jun 7, 2020
449
167
North America
iMac G3 spits folder every time I try to boot. How do I force boot off dvd? Nothing works. Tried everything.
B7639D88-9C42-4757-AF44-9B60F440B629.jpeg

If I force boot in Open Firmware it says Cant open. Need to boot off Tiger DVD (It has a DVD drive), to wipe and install OS X
 
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Might try downloading the Tiger CD image from Macintosh Garden, burning it, and booting off that. Sometimes a dirty drive can get iffy with DVDs but is fine with CDs.

You can also make a flash drive and boot off that, although it will be slow.

Just to be sure, is your tiger disk back or gray?
 
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bunnspecial said:
Might try downloading the Tiger CD image from Macintosh Garden, burning it, and booting off that. Sometimes a dirty drive can get iffy with DVDs but is fine with CDs.
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Yeah, that was the first burned one I have tried. Didn’t work- ugh!

bunnspecial said:
You can also make a flash drive and boot off that, although it will be slow.

Just to be sure, is your tiger disk back or gray?
Click to expand...

It’s black.
 
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New PATA what?

The DVD drive is special and not easy to find.

A bad HDD won’t keep an install disk from booting.

You can put your iBook in TDM and boot it off that.
 
Yes, I know what PATA means. Are you saying a new PATA HDD?

As I said, a bad HDD won’t stop it from booting a bootable disk.
 
christiann said:
PATA for Parallel ATA. I meant a new one because of the flashing folder. iBook SuperDrive hasn’t come yet. It’s coming from france, it’s been in the US FOR 9 Days- hurry La Poste!
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As it's been stated, the flashing "?" folder is a surefire sign that the system can't find a bootable drive (either the HDD is toast or missing), as for the CD, those drives usually fail to fully pull in the disc, sometimes it'll look like the disk is in there but in reality it's not fully pushed in.

I'd try with a external FireWire 400 DVD drive just to be sure. But another Mac in TD mode could also work.

Oh and yes, La Poste can be ungodly slow sometimes... But I can't blame 'em with the recent events, that's another story for another topic.
 
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Alexis Trinquet said:
As it's been stated, the flashing "?" folder is a surefire sign that the system can't find a bootable drive (either the HDD is toast or missing), as for the CD, those drives usually fail to fully pull in the disc, sometimes it'll look like the disk is in there but in reality it's not fully pushed in.

I'd try with a external FireWire 400 DVD drive just to be sure. But another Mac in TD mode could also work.

Oh and yes, La Poste can be ungodly slow sometimes... But I can't blame 'em with the recent events, that's another story for another topic.
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Haha. I’ve never bought anything from France, will they charge me for taxes or to sign something?
 
Depends on how in bad shape the HDD is. Once, my iBook G3 wouldn't successfully boot off the CD until I replaced the bad HDD with a good new one. I can't recall though if it's like yours (flashing folder) or booted but then got stuck with the beach ball.
 
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for this said:
Depends on how in bad shape the HDD is. Once, my iBook G3 wouldn't successfully boot off the CD until I replaced the bad HDD with a good new one. I can't recall though if it's like yours (flashing folder) or booted but then got stuck with the beach ball.
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Should i go look at the drive?
 
Congratulations! Though I'd love for someone to explain why a bad HDD would preclude successfully booting off of a DVD/CD. Is it something in the iMac G3 firmware?
 
rampancy said:
Congratulations! Though I'd love for someone to explain why a bad HDD would preclude successfully booting off of a DVD/CD. Is it something in the iMac G3 firmware?
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Well I don’t know. It’s just before with the bad hard drive it wouldn’t do anything, it wouldn’t even force boot off dvd/cd. Now it does it with the new drive.


Doubt it because it’s on the newest firmware.
 
christiann said:
Haha. I’ve never bought anything from France, will they charge me for taxes or to sign something?
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I don't really know, there could be taxes applied, but I'm not entirely sure.

I'm willing to say "yes" since I bought something from the US, and I got taxed quite a lot (item was 10€ with shipping, got 40 euros of taxes... Ouch.), unless you paid that iBook from eBay where they handle the taxes.


Take this with a grain of salt, I'm going on a limb there as it's been quite a while since I had to face something like that.
 
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Alexis Trinquet said:
I don't really know, there could be taxes applied, but I'm not entirely sure.

I'm willing to say "yes" since I bought something from the US, and I got taxed quite a lot (item was 10€ with shipping, got 40 euros of taxes... Ouch.), unless you paid that iBook from eBay where they handle the taxes.


Take this with a grain of salt, I'm going on a limb there as it's been quite a while since I had to face something like that.
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I’ve never bought anything outside of the US or CHINA. The only reason I bought the SuperDrive was because I came across only one listing that matched my exact search results.
 
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I hope it'll arrive fast for ya, though I don't really remember if the iBook SD is compatible with the iMac G3.

I know that the G4 cube shared the same drive (and fatally, suffered the same fault), but that's about it.

Could also look into rebuilding the drive, I think there's a belt that you need to replace, if the drive ever dies on my G3, there is no way in Hell I'm opening that thing up again 🤣 I'm too scared of breaking the clips.
 
Alexis Trinquet said:
I hope it'll arrive fast for ya, though I don't really remember if the iBook SD is compatible with the iMac G3.

I know that the G4 cube shared the same drive (and fatally, suffered the same fault), but that's about it.

Could also look into rebuilding the drive, I think there's a belt that you need to replace, if the drive ever dies on my G3, there is no way in Hell I'm opening that thing up again 🤣 I'm too scared of breaking the clips.
Click to expand...

Sorry if I was confusing.

I bought an IBOOK M6497 superdrive for my iBOOK M6497
 
Alexis Trinquet said:
I don't really know, there could be taxes applied, but I'm not entirely sure.

I'm willing to say "yes" since I bought something from the US, and I got taxed quite a lot (item was 10€ with shipping, got 40 euros of taxes... Ouch.), unless you paid that iBook from eBay where they handle the taxes.


Take this with a grain of salt, I'm going on a limb there as it's been quite a while since I had to face something like that.
Click to expand...
The US doesn't tend to tax parcels much, not in the kind of money we're talking about. I've sold PowerPC cards for well over €100 to US residents and they were not taxed, despite the full amount being noted on the customs clearance papers.
 
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I've never paid tax on anything I imported. I've admittedly not bought a TON from Europe, but most recently I bought two kind of pricey rolls of film($70 each) from Poland that were declared at full value and they just took a long time get here. I've had computer and car parts both come from England(last some carburetor parts ~6 months ago for about $50) and have not paid taxes. The biggest one has been camera equipment from Japan, often at a few hundred dollars per item. I know people who have bought complete transmissions from England for ~£500 and they weren't taxed.

From what I remember with actually traveling and bringing things back, the tax threshold is quite high-something like $10K in the mid-2000s when I went to France.

One of my "pipe dreams"(that I hope I can one day do) is to import a 1973 MGB GT V8 from England(a car not sold in the US), and the last I checked they were running ~£15-20K. I'd expect to be taxed on that, but probably not anything else.
 
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