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Panther 10.3 killed my iMac DV?! Urgent help needed.

gotohamish

gotohamish

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 15, 2001
1,078
10
BKLN
Hi

I bought Panther for my iMac DV, and I started it up on the Panther CD, went thru the installation introduction, and it gave me an error saying it wasn't eligible on this machine - I'm guessing it was the firmware, but I clicked too fast and it disappeared. It began to reboot the machine, but hung on the spinning shut down logo.

So... I force rebooted, and now it chimes (sometimes) then waits a few seconds and shuts down. I've got the CD out, held down every key combination, zapped PRAM (when it lets me, not often) and just powers off.

What have I done? How can it be fixed? HELP!
 
try this:

Being that you interrupted the installation sequence your drive may be irretrevable. However you should still be able to boot the machine.

Some questions before I get into a specific how... Answering them will tell me how to help you.

What OS's were installed before you began?

OS X.0?

OS X.1?

OS X.2?

OS 9.1?

OS 9.2?

Current OS 9 and OS X revisions?

Do you have another boot CD? (preferrably a Mac OS X.2 and/or Norton Utilities (with 9.2 or later).)


Do you have the original CD packet that came with your Mac?

Did you select to do a clean install or an upgrade?

and finally: How much RAM do you have installed?
 
Re: try this:

Originally posted by mischief
Being that you interrupted the installation sequence your drive may be irretrevable. However you should still be able to boot the machine.

Some questions before I get into a specific how... Answering them will tell me how to help you.

What OS's were installed before you began?

OS X.0?

OS X.1?

OS X.2?

OS 9.1?

OS 9.2?

Current OS 9 and OS X revisions?

Do you have another boot CD? (preferrably a Mac OS X.2 and/or Norton Utilities (with 9.2 or later).)


Do you have the original CD packet that came with your Mac?

Did you select to do a clean install or an upgrade?

and finally: How much RAM do you have installed?
Click to expand...

Was running OS 9.0 solely. It doesn't boot from ANY cd. I've tried everything. It doesn't even read the CD or get far enough. Even with the original CDs from the box.

I selected a totally clean install, to wipe and replace everything.

I had 192MB of RAM in. The RAM worked fine in OS 9. I also tried it with just 128MB stick in. No good.

AAGH!
 
Re: Re: try this:

Originally posted by gotohamish
Was running OS 9.0 solely. It doesn't boot from ANY cd. I've tried everything. It doesn't even read the CD or get far enough. Even with the original CDs from the box.

I selected a totally clean install, to wipe and replace everything.

I had 192MB of RAM in. The RAM worked fine in OS 9. I also tried it with just 128MB stick in. No good.

AAGH!
Click to expand...

Put ONLY the 64 MB chip that came with your machine in and try it again. The Apple RAM speed spec changed between OS's. In OS 9 you'd be fine with 3-3-3 RAM but OS X.2 and above will excrete their eyes if you don't use 3-2-3 RAM. It's kind of lame but the Apple installed RAM meets the new spec.

If you still have trouble call 1-800-SOS- APPLE or visit an Apple Store near you.... Or e-mail me.;)
 
Hopefully it wasn't a firmware upgrade interrupt.

You may want to disconnect the HD and see if it'll boot from the CD, if so everythings OK HW wise.

If you mess up the install enough, it will hang the machine bad enough where you can't key combo out or do much else.

The bootROM (aka firmware) immediately will checks for a ROM file to continue the boot process, if it or the drive is mess up it'll hang the machine. You'll need to take the "bad" drive out of the loop to test the machine and/or get it to boot to CD.
 
Originally posted by Sun Baked
Hopefully it wasn't a firmware upgrade interrupt.

You may want to disconnect the HD and see if it'll boot from the CD, if so everythings OK HW wise.

If you mess up the install enough, it will hang the machine bad enough where you can't key combo out or do much else.

The bootROM (aka firmware) immediately will checks for a ROM file to continue the boot process, if it or the drive is mess up it'll hang the machine. You'll need to take the "bad" drive out of the loop to test the machine and/or get it to boot to CD.
Click to expand...

Thanks - I'll try it in the morning, and post back. In the meantime, any other suggestions would be amazing.

Has anyone discovered if it's possible the Panther Install CD would do the firmware upgrade for you?
 
I found one of the unused iMacs (iMac DV slot-loading Sage) at my company and tried to install Panther. It had OS X 10.1 and OS 9.2.2 on it when I found it. But it didn't even read the CD.

I thought it was CD-ROM drive that caused the trouble so I clean-installed Panther on it from my Powerbook 550mhz using "Target disk mode." Installation was fine and it still runs on my laptop but not on the iMac.

I'm going to take off the added RAM modules and try it again.
 
Originally posted by phreaker57x
Isn't Panther shipped in a DVD? That's how Jaguar came for me.... (a DVD for the system, and a CD for the hardware test)
Click to expand...

Nope! Comes on 4 CDs + Xcode if you buy it seperatly from a computer. A lot of OS X supported Macs don't have DVD drives... Think early iMacs, eMacs, iBooks, ...
 
It's Memory

The other iMac DV special edition snow (500 Mhz G3) perfectly works. So I switched the memory modules with the iMac DV Sage (450Mhz G3) and what happened was...

The snow iMaC doesn't load Panther. It keeps thinking and the Sage iMac did work instead.

It's got to be something to do with the memory module I have on the Sage iMac.
 
In the read me that comes with Panther it says to make sure the Firmware is updated before installing....

This does not appear to have been done. Plug in an external display and see if you get video. If not then you can try to boot to the OS 9 disk.

What ever you do, don't try resetting the logic board, you could loose video permanently
 
This exact same problem is happening to me now!!! But on a Powerbook G4.

Won't boot from any system disk, taken everything out/off as per apple helpline advice, still no joy.

What next.

I want to format the disk afresh and start over, can I do this without booting up from a system disk??

Please help.
 
Your not having the same problem as above... it looks the same but is not.

Try resetting the power management. How to do this is in your user manual.
 
Just tried that, thanks, but no joy. Same as.

Could the install disk be corrupt?...or is that a long shot.

9 times out of 10 when I try and force it to boot from the cd, it ejects and I get the flashing ?.
 
remove anything that is added, including ram, then try again..... It's unlikely that the disk is bad
 
Only thing left to unplug is the airport card which is locate deep within it's bowels....and under star screws.

Do you really think that will help, I already oicked the ram out hours ago.

Yours in increasing desperation.
 
Just a second plz...

What can be done to restore the previous firmware?

Here's is what happenned : I tryed to install 10.3 without performing the firmware update before :(

What can i do now? my iMac looks dead.

I Have the gong, the hdd starts, i hear the screen static effect (before it starts) but the computer seems to go in sleep mode. I cant boot on any CD.

I tried without success to:

- reset Pram
- hold 15 sec the power button
- hold the reset button
- change the batery

Help me plz !!!
:confused:
 
Originally posted by SylverBullet
- reset Pram
- hold 15 sec the power button
- hold the reset button
- change the batery
Click to expand...
how bout resetting power management, booting up into open firmware mode and fiddling around with things (reset nvram, etc.)...

bizarre problems...good thing you guys are calling AppleCare, I would really like to know what this is and how to fix it :)
 
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