emac and a wonky combo drive

[bluekatt]

now this ere emac i got my hands on has a problem ( doesnt it always ?)

it works fine other for the fact that it spits out any cd i put in there orginal or cd-r dvd or audio it spins them around for a bit and then ejects them

fortunally i have an external dvd writer which reads all cd's i throw at it just fine

however the emac refuses to boot from the usb drive ( dont tel me its impossible my ibook G3 boots from the same dvd drive and same cd's ona semi regular basis so i am bit..bemused by the fact that a emac cant boot from it )

anyway i got several dvd drives lounging around i dont use so i plan to swap it out and found a take apart guide

the real question is how careful do i need to be with the crt and the fly back generator yes i know this wil spark off that age old argument again but its been a while since i have been inside a all in one crt mac and certainly not one with a crt this big

i doubt ill end up an blue and crispy critter but i'd like to be sure

 

[coius]

it's rather easy to replace the drive. It's much like the tray-loading iMac. All the actual computer components are on a tray that when you take the screws out of it, it just comes with it. The dvd drive is fairly easy to remove.

Also, when the G4s came out, at least the later ones, they seemed to have remove USB Booting support. Yes, it does it on the PowerMacs, but USB 2.0 and later USB 1.1 models won't boot. Not sure why, it seems to be that they did this when they switched over to 10.3 or so, but that's when they decided to remove support.

It seems that G3's starting with the AGP Models seems to have had USB boot support, but that's mainly because they have USB 1.1

Sorry man, it looks like you can't boot from USB. however... If you have laptop or PowerMac that you can turn into a FWTDM, you can put the CD/DVD in it, hook it up to the eMac and boot from the Optical drive on the laptop/powermac, as it will let it be seen over the FireWire connection

I did this with an iBook that had a bummed DVD/CD-RW drive before apple got it for the last time and replaced it, but I was able to reinstall the system after putting my Pismo into FWTDM and hooking it up through the FireWire port and booting off the optical drive from the Pismo.

I dunno what to say, but you can go into it fairly easy. Although the CRT isn't shielded, if you work from the underneath of it, you won't get your hands even CLOSE to the high voltage area. There is no reason to be on the other side of the sled

Best of luck!

coius

 

[bluekatt]

firewire target mode i havent even tought about that

mostly because i never used any firewire hardware in my life

you dont happen to have a link to a guide do you ?

my ibook G3 500 mhz from 2001 doe sboot off usb but only from tiger jaguar doesnt even bother and panther kernel panics

just out of curiosity i know you have been inside a emac this guid going at it the right way or what ? http://www.wilko.com/emac/

oh and i just tried to repair permissions and got a ..interesting error

namely error : no valid packages (-9997)

...no idea what it means

 

[bluekatt]

unfortunaly fire wire target disk doesnt work my ibook did not pick up on the emac my wallstreet is not firewire equipped and im not sure if my intel imac could be arsed to do it

i crawled in the emac and seeing that i am posting this from it i am not dead and nor is the emac

never the less it was a fight up hill all the way

first of all 3 of the hex screws had the holes tapped out so i had to go out and buya cheap ass dremel clone ( godo excuse i wanted one for ages anyway )

i spend the next 2 hours working on the three screws and giving my self irreperrable tinnitus in the process to grind out a groove in each screw so i could lodge a flat head screw driver in the groove

first hurdle over come

second hurdle dissasambeling the emac ...my look at all the screws !

third hurdle getting the dvd cradle out was harder then i tought and i bent a few things

as it turns out i found out why the dvd player was behaving like it did two pins of the power cable were almost completley torn of the pcb while the ide controller was in dire state with black scorch marks ...great al that trouble for nothing

so cursing all the way i put the emac back together again ( oh look left over screws ..wonder where those go )

to over come hurdle number four that little power wire i fiddeld for 15 minutes only to find out hurdle number 5 i didnt put the speaker rray back far enoiugh

so off come the hood again pushed the speakers back ...swearing alot and spend another 15 minutes fiddeling with the power button and its idiotically small curled wired

finally succes but when i want to pop the cover back on i find it restisting i cant even line it up properly with the hex screw holes

bugger you thought i i have had enough of you and left that to fight for another day

i booted the emac to find out that the dvd driver now totally died

demon i yelled at it it hought i was done with thee !

in a fit of idle curiosity i hooked up my external dvd writer and plunked in my tiger cd restarted it and held option to force it to display the boot disc choice

i chose the tiger installer disc thinking it wont work and went away for a bit

when i returned the emac had booted alright and was waiting for me to okay mac os X tiger installer

which i off course did

and tiger installed just fine

i wish i had tought of this yesterday before i wasted 6 hours on it

i just wonder why it is suddenly able to boot off the external usb dvd when it wasnt able to do that yesterday maybe because the internal dvd rom finally died

whatever at least the beast works

how ever this is the second macintosh i have whose internal cd rom player is borked the ibook shares this ( its a mac book air only thicker heavier and 7 years older )

i can savley say though that this day was awfull

now what am i supposed to do with all these screws ?

 

[coius]

just out of curiosity i know you have been inside a emac this guid going at it the right way or what ? http://www.wilko.com/emac/

Yup! That's about it!

It's not that hard, and sometimes even easier than an iMac DV. It's certainly easier than an iMac G4 (I had to work on my brother's iMac 800Mhz G4) and it's not as bad as people may thing. And it's waaaaaayyyy easier than working on Apple's Laptops

I would take the eMac any day over the newer apple laptops. And here, I love to take laptops apart!!!

 

[bluekatt]

i have bene inside a imac G4 more times then i care to remember and find them rather easy much easier to take apart then this monster

i'd choose a imac G4 any time of the day over an emac imac G3 or an intel imac

the ibook G3's are easy too

anyway i managed to get in the emac and get out alive as wel and i managed to get it to boot twice of an external usb drive

its running along quite nicley justa shame the internal drive connectors are irrevocably damaged

 

[wood_e]

couldn't you change the cable for the drive or try a different drive?

 

[bluekatt]

couldn't you change the cable for the drive or try a different drive?

no part of the ittybitty connectors solderd to the pcb of the power lead to the drive are sheared clean off the pcb its doing nothing any more

but thankfully i managed to get it to boot twice of an external usb drive and installed tiger