Mac Performa 5200CD OS Installation Problems

[ldefoe]

I'm having problems installing an OS onto my Mac. When I try to boot from the hard disc, I get the death chime. I unplugged the hard drive so it boots on a CD-ROM and it boots fine but when I try to install the OS I keep getting errors. I don't get anything specific, just "an error occurred" and I don't know what's wrong. I ran a utility to check for problems and nowhere can I find any problems.nibe tried multiple different CD-ROM OS discs and multiple different versions of OS to no avail. Can someone please help me?

 

[bunnspecial]

The death chime combined with your random, unspecified errors would make me think it's a RAM problem.

With that said, a PRAM reset(hold command+option+P+R during start up and wait for a second chime) would be a reasonable starting point and MIGHT fix it.

 

[NathanJHill]

Are you sure it's not a bad hard drive?

Kind of strange that it will boot from a CD just fine - but won't install to that hard drive you have in there. Do you have a spare you could swap in?

FYI - I got a cheap 2.5 IDE -> 3.5 IDE adapter so I could use this old 80GB hd from a Mac Mini. Works great and seems a bit faster. And I am using a 5215CD.

 

[havokalien]

What OS? 7.5.3 or newer is needed, but how can you install if the hard drive is disconnected? Do not reconnect the hard drive after boot, its not hot swappable. Leave hard drive connected, start from CD by holding down the C key on start up. That will boot from cd, then format the drive using the disk utility. The max OS you can use if you have enough ram is 9.2.1 with that powerpc, it might stop at 8.6 due to processor speed, i forget off the top of my head.

 

[bunnspecial]

The max OS you can use if you have enough ram is 9.2.1 with that powerpc, it might stop at 8.6 due to processor speed, i forget off the top of my head.

Absent all other factors, nothing newer than 9.1 will install directly from a CD by virtue of it being a pre-G3 machine. Of course, OS 9 Helper will get you to 9.2.2, but I doubt it would even boot off a 9.2.1 disk.

Honestly, though, 8.6 is probably the best max and 8.1 would likely be a better choice. My 6200CD(which is the same computer in a desktop case rather than AIO) ticks along fine on 8.1(as much as I dislike it in general).

 

[Dronecatcher]

I had the same problem when I bought a MDD - it could only boot from a DVD when the hard drives were disconnected (their were 2 installed). After trial and error, I found one drive was responsible for the lock up, discarding it brought things back to normal.
The bad drive would crash it in Open Firmware and lock up the boot manager, so I'd guess your hard drive has gone bad - is there another you can slot in to try?

 

[Intell]

I don't think OS 9 Helper ever supported the 5200/6200 Macs, resulting in their final OS version being 9.1