Strange boot up situation... Mouse gets Startup Disk working?

[requieminadream]

We have three Power Mac G4's here at our office which have been salvaged for parts in other machines for some time now. We decided to piece together a G4 to play a video in our lobby during office hours. One that would shut down and boot up at required times and automatically play the video file.

I got the pieces working in a G4, and I then formatted and did a clean install of Tiger on a spare working HD we had laying around. After the installation, I ran Software Update and got every last update installed and ready to go. The video plays fine, etc.

Now the weird part:

Every time I shut down, when I boot back up, I get an blinking OS9-style blue folder-? in the middle of the screen.

After trying a few times, I decided to attempt to re-install Tiger. I obviously couldn't eject the DVD drive without being in the OS, so I did what any Apple guy would do, and held down the mouse while booting to force the drive to eject.

Then I got the good ole' gray and white Tiger boot up screen. Tiger loaded quickly and everything was just fine.

I doubled checked the Startup Disk settings, and everything was fine there.

I checked the time/date and made sure it wasn't the Logic Board battery failing to hold data, however the time/date were correct.

Here is a video of the situation to drive home the point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dNEBtSIR1Q

What... oh what... is going on?

 

[requieminadream]

We have three Power Mac G4's here at our office which have been salvaged for parts in other machines for some time now. We decided to piece together a G4 to play a video in our lobby during office hours. One that would shut down and boot up at required times and automatically play the video file.

I got the pieces working in a G4, and I then formatted and did a clean install of Tiger on a spare working HD we had laying around. After the installation, I ran Software Update and got every last update installed and ready to go. The video plays fine, etc.

Now the weird part:

Every time I shut down, when I boot back up, I get an blinking OS9-style blue folder-? in the middle of the screen.

After trying a few times, I decided to attempt to re-install Tiger. I obviously couldn't eject the DVD drive without being in the OS, so I did what any Apple guy would do, and held down the mouse while booting to force the drive to eject.

Then I got the good ole' gray and white Tiger boot up screen. Tiger loaded quickly and everything was just fine.

I doubled checked the Startup Disk settings, and everything was fine there.

I checked the time/date and made sure it wasn't the Logic Board battery failing to hold data, however the time/date were correct.

Here is a video of the situation to drive home the point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dNEBtSIR1Q

What... oh what... is going on?

Discovered the solution!

The optical drives opening and helping boot the machine had me thinking about the BIOS and boot orders. I moved the IDE cable from one ATA slot to another, and bam, now it starts up just fine!

Hooray for progress!