PB G4 disk booting help

[Apostrophe]

Hi,

I posted earlier about the PowerBook G4 that gets stuck on the loading screen. I'm not sure what version the laptop is, but everymac.com said that some versions of the laptop were shipped with OS 9.1.

So I tried booting the laptop from my OS 9.2.1 CD. I put it in and held the C key. Nothing.

So eventually, getting bored, I restarted it again and held down the Option key. BOOM! It showed me an icon of the hard disk with a blue X next to it (probably for OS 10) and below it two icons: One was an arrow that is circular, like the refresh icon. The other was an arrow pointing to the right.

What is this screen? If I inserted the OS 9.2.1 disk and held down the Option key, would it be any different? What do those icons mean?

I would experiment further with this, but I'm afraid of corrupting the HD even more.

Thanks,

-Apostrophe

 

[ealex79]

That is the Open Firmware boot selector..

It shows you the bootable volumes.

Clicking the circular arrow refreshes the menu choices indeed, f.e. because you put a CD in the drive or whatever.

I guess the other button boots the selected volume.