G3 M4984 boot options not working

[Blastoid84]

I grabbed a G3 iMac M4984 that posts but goes to a ?/Finder icon, I assumed the HD was shot. Taking it apart the battery is the original and has leaked just on its end but the board seems clean. I replaced it with a 3.6v, put in a HD, and put it back together. It does not boot to the CD of 9.2.1.universal that works on my G3 laptop by holding C. I do not have a Mac usb keyboard and have tried holding T, C, P/R/Win/ALT with nothing helpful happening. The Win/ALT/P/R causes the machine to go Amber/Green and make the start up chime, I did that for 3 chimes and let the keys go which led to the same ?/Finder icon.

Few things to note

• The CD is good, I booted and reinstalled OS9 on my G3 laptop.
• The CD rom spins and sounds ok but I assume it is bad.
• I have the G3 laptop and a firewire cable inbound for tomorro.
• The IDE HD I put in was formatted on a newer 2013 macbook, my G3 would not see it over the usb adapter I have.

Just looking for some guidance on next steps to get this thing running, I'm a bit out of my depth with Macs so please excuse my ignorance if I missed something obvious.

 

[RepairManiac]

Disconnect the IDE ribbon cable to the HD and see if the cd boots. If so, check your HD jumper settings as it should be Master not Slave or CS. If memory serves me correct, CS (cable select) wasn’t used until the G4’s.

 

[Blastoid84]

Gave that a try along with another disc, 8.5. No dice on either. It was on CS and I set it to Master mode. Tried with it disconnected as well.

I did try the usb keyboard in the G3 iBook and that was able to boot to cd and target disc mode using the external keyboard. It's looking more and more like the iMac has an odd issue.