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New Internal HD, Won't Boot

MillieWales

MillieWales

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Sep 15, 2003
484
191
UK
I have just installed a new Internal HD into my stepdads G3 iMac (drawer loading not slot loading). I also wanted to install OS X. All went well, had to partition the HD to make the first section less than 8 Gig, and then I installed Jaguar. Then thats kind of it. It restarts and if I don't have the CD in I get the flashing folder icon, which I believe means it can't find the startup disk. So I put in the CD and it trys to install it all again. Disk Utility doesn't have, I believe, a way of choosing the start-up disk, and I therefore can't get past it. I thought I would try Panther, which is an upgrade disc, but I get some kind of debug screen come up, just a few lines of text in the top left corner of the screen, nothing interesting. So I guess i can't do that then.

What now? I haven't put any firmware updates on, I spent hours trying to find them, but all the ones I found said that that iMac didn't need them, which I thought was strange. If I do need them I am guessing it would be ok to put the old HD back in to make firmware changes.

Any help would be appreciated, and sorry if I havent explained it clearly, let me know anything confusing and I will try and clarify.
 
Hmmm

Could be a few things but you need to give a bit more information. How many Gigabytes, have you changed any jumpers? It could be that your new drive is a large ATA100 or 133 drive and I suspect your slot loading iMac is ATA66, as to what to do about it I don't know.

Give more info and I'm sure someone will be able to help you.
 
Havent changed jumpers, checking them now. HD is a Maxtor (same as one that was in there) 80Gb ATA/133. If the iMac is ATA/66 is that a problem?? As I said I managed to get the OS onto the Drive, just can't get the iMac to see it as a startup disc.

Apparantly you can hold down option key as you start and this helps, but not sure if this applies to a machine this old!
 
All seems fine. The message I am getting if I let it boot without cd is;

DEFAULT CATCH!, code=400 at %SRR0: ffff7ff4 %SRR1: 40003030
Apple iMac Open Firmware 3.0.f3 built on 07/16/99 at 12:15:09
Copyright 1994-1999 Apple Computer, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
ok
0 > _


So it could be a firmware issue, but as I said the firmware updates I had on the Jaguar disc wouldn't load as it said they were not needed.

The Option key trick appears to not work.

:(
 
this is sort of related to another question i had. Im guessing by the fact you tried to install another hard disk into your mac, that i would be able to just stick a HDD i have from a previous PC into a new eMac?

Oh, and from what i know of PC systems (im a soon-to-be mac switcher!) the problem might be to do with 1 of 2 things, either incompatible harddisk/cables, or your jumpers. I would guess at what you should do is next is ring either mac support, or go through your manual to find out what code 400 means in the error code listings.
 
marccarter said:
All seems fine. The message I am getting if I let it boot without cd is;

DEFAULT CATCH!, code=400 at %SRR0: ffff7ff4 %SRR1: 40003030
Apple iMac Open Firmware 3.0.f3 built on 07/16/99 at 12:15:09
Copyright 1994-1999 Apple Computer, Inc.
All Rights Reserved.
ok
0 > _
Click to expand...

Somewhere else on the forums I saw someone getting this code. I don't recall what the resolution was (if any). Poke around the last couple of days and see if you can find it.

If the jumpers are set right (they must be if you can use the drive), then your problem is a bit odd. Did you try zapping the PRAM? That never hurts. Also, can you choose the internal HD as a startup disk from the install CD System Preferences? I can't remember if that's an option or not.
 
AtiLaw said:
this is sort of related to another question i had. Im guessing by the fact you tried to install another hard disk into your mac, that i would be able to just stick a HDD i have from a previous PC into a new eMac?
Click to expand...

You could stick the drive in there, but you only have room for one drive in the eMac. A USB or Firewire case might be a better answer if you want to use both drives.
 
I had a similar problem when I bought a new Hard Drive and installed it in my G4. I installed OS 9 on my old drive and OS X on the new drive. starting from each of them for the first couple times gave me the folder with a question mark icon, but for some reason I just let it sit like that and it eventually found whichever startup disk I had tried to use. Works fine now and the not found icon doesn't coem up anymore. It was really weird though.

I'm not sure if you've tried just letting it sit and I know its a sketchy sounding solution but it's worth a shot I guess.

Matt
 
mkubal said:
I had a similar problem when I bought a new Hard Drive and installed it in my G4. I installed OS 9 on my old drive and OS X on the new drive. starting from each of them for the first couple times gave me the folder with a question mark icon, but for some reason I just let it sit like that and it eventually found whichever startup disk I had tried to use. Works fine now and the not found icon doesn't coem up anymore. It was really weird though.

I'm not sure if you've tried just letting it sit and I know its a sketchy sounding solution but it's worth a shot I guess.

Matt
Click to expand...

Are the two hard drives on the motherboard ATA controller or a PCI card? My main boot drive is connected to a PCI card and I had some problems getting it the computer to boot from the drive. If I zap the PRAM it forgets where to look and I have to boot from some other drive and then choose the usual hard drive as a startup drive in System Preferences. After a restart, it fires right up.
 
osprey76 said:
You could stick the drive in there, but you only have room for one drive in the eMac. A USB or Firewire case might be a better answer if you want to use both drives.
Click to expand...

I have a 160GB firewire/USB2 HDD, I just wanted a bigger drive inside the thing too (40GB might not be enough). I was just worried about not upgrading at time of purchase (through apple), then finding I cannot upgrade with a bog standard HDD since Im not yet familiar with mac hardware/software yet so wasnt sure if they used modified technology or not (something M$ would love to do given the chance!!), thanks for the help.
 
osprey76 said:
Somewhere else on the forums I saw someone getting this code. I don't recall what the resolution was (if any). Poke around the last couple of days and see if you can find it.

If the jumpers are set right (they must be if you can use the drive), then your problem is a bit odd. Did you try zapping the PRAM? That never hurts. Also, can you choose the internal HD as a startup disk from the install CD System Preferences? I can't remember if that's an option or not.
Click to expand...


i was getting the same error code, but what i did was create a RAID set with two external hard drives, the problem wasnt resolved but you might want to try...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=42642
i was directed to that document and while it didnt help for me it might do something to resolve your problem.
good luck :)
 
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