endless iMac G3 installation problems. ugh.

[aphetica]

Hi!

I recently acquired my first iMac G3/500 from a relative who found it while working as a garbage man, but I can't get it to boot any OS.

When I first turned it on I got the "?" folder thing.

I tried inserting an installation disc, but found out that someone had jammed a cd into the slot hard enough to break / mangle / disfigure the drive beyond repair.

So, lacking a CD drive, (and not knowing anything about the nature of iMacs yet) I did the next logical thing and pulled the HDD out and put it in my G4.

I snooped around a bit and spent some time laughing at pictures of the owner apparently winning some kind of marathon, inherited their iTunes collection, and pretty quickly figured out that it had OS9 and 10.1 installed on it.

Then I wiped / formatted the drive, put Panther on it, and stuck it back in the iMac. Still nothing. (probably not the best idea, now that I look back at it.)

I also tried cracking the case and using a molex splitter with a standard-size CD drive, but it just spun the installation discs for awhile and gave up. (not enough power maybe?)

I went on ebay and bought a firewire cable, waited a week, (after finding out about the whole firmware issue with these machines) and then attempted to install OS9 via target disk mode. The G4 told me that OS9 installed fine on the iMac's HDD, but when I restarted it was still flashing "?" at me. I relinked the machines and tried to get the firmware update to run on the G4 and install on the iMac, but that doesn't seem to work.

I don't know what to do. I don't really want to buy a new CD drive just to get an OS installed, since I rarely use anything other than ethernet to get data into my computers.

(that, and taking this thing apart was worse than a 6400)

Am I doing something wrong here? Have I overlooked something? Or is it just not possible to run a firmware update over firewire? And knowing that someone had already installed 10.1 on this machine at some point, shouldn't the firmware be relatively up to date?

...or lastly, could it be something as simple as the battery that's keeping me from booting?

 

[coius]

hold down the option key and select the boot disk. It very well could be that the OF hasn't found a blessed system folder.

 

[equill]

You didn't write explicitly that you had removed and (perhaps) junked the CD-ROM drive. It is not-at-all unknown for a damaged drive to inhibit another drive on the same ATA bus. You should also confirm whether the returned HDD needs jumpering as master or sole drive in the absence of its little ATAPI mate. You were fortunate to find a junked iMac with no worse problem than Quizzical Floppy. Keep in mind that the operative indication by QF is that the system 'cannot find' a valid (blest) System Folder on an accessible startup volume. If your externally set-up HDD worked externally, it is likely that the iMac cannot 'see' it now, which has to be the result of a cabling, power or controller fault.

You can live without the ATAPI drive if you are able to update firmware from OS 9 in another Mac. The advantage of being able to use a CD as boot volume should not be overlooked, however. A utility such as DiskWarrior cannot be used over a network, although it will certainly work from an attached FireWire drive.

de

 

[aphetica]

I did remove the CD Drive once I realized it was irreparable.

I will look into the things suggested here. Thanks!

 

[aphetica]

hold down the option key and select the boot disk. It very well could be that the OF hasn't found a blessed system folder.

Okay, I tried this today and all I got was a blue screen with an arrow pointing right and a circular arrow. Nothing else on the screen.

(I could be wrong, but isn't this screen supposed to have drive icons over the arrows usually?)

The right arrow does nothing, and the circular arrow just makes the cursor turn into spinning watch hands.

 

[aphetica]

You should also confirm whether the returned HDD needs jumpering as master or sole drive in the absence of its little ATAPI mate. You were fortunate to find a junked iMac with no worse problem than Quizzical Floppy. Keep in mind that the operative indication by QF is that the system 'cannot find' a valid (blest) System Folder on an accessible startup volume. If your externally set-up HDD worked externally, it is likely that the iMac cannot 'see' it now, which has to be the result of a cabling, power or controller fault.
de

So I doublechecked all my connections and everything seems tight.

How do I know if the drive needs jumpering? Do iMacs require this?

I tried jumpering it to master and booting it regularly, and also holding down option, but neither worked... I couldn't find any sole drive jumper schematics for Samsung's SV series drives.

I was thinking... everymac says the indigo/snow 500 shipped with OS9.1, but the disc I used was a universal 9.2.1.

Could that be a problem?

 

[equill]

The first iMac G3/500 was the DV-SE in Summer 2000 (Graphite or Snow), with 9.0.4. The second was the Indigo/Flower Power/Blue Dalmation bunch in early 2001, with 9.1 (and, later, 10.0.3 also). The third (Indigo/Snow) was released in Summer 2001, with changeing configurations. Even if yours is Indigo, that is perhaps not as conclusive as the processor version, in conjunction with the release date, for identification: 83.0, 33.11 and 22.15 respectively, together with the video RAM complement and original optical drive. Not until you can open Apple System Profiler is that knowledge accessible to you, however. You probably know nothing of the iMac's history (repairs, mods and so on), so the only safe course is to assume that it has no firmware updates (2.4 and 4.1.9), that it can boot into nothing later than OS 9.0.4 (or 9.1), and start from the bottom. If the firmware updates are already present, the iMac will tell you .

There are some things related to the target Mac's hard drive that you can do in target disk mode, but firmware updating must be done while the iMac is booted locally in OS 9, as the instructions make clear. The firmware updates also include improvements to FireWire behaviour, including booting from external drives. As insurance, it is also wise to install OS 9 drivers during formatting of your HDD so that you can have an alternative to OS X as a startup OS when you are troubleshooting.

Jumpering necessity depends on the drive, not the iMac. Seagate drives can tolerate no jumper if the drive is solitary. Maxtor, Western Digital, IBM and Quantum have their own ways, sometimes model-dependent. Since you have two drives on the bus (of necessity), you need to consult your drive manufacturer's literature.

de

 

[aphetica]

I only have one drive on the bus. I removed the broken CDrom completely.

Today I tried installing 9.0 with target disc mode, but that didn't work either.

Last night I tried 8.5, but the G4 wouldn't even allow it. (I figured it couldn't hurt to try).

Soo... 9.2.1, 9.0, and 8.5 have not worked so far. I'm running out of install discs.

I really don't know what to do.

9.1 maybe?

Has anyone actually ever successfully booted an iMac without a CD drive?

I'm not 100% sure if this is even the original drive that was in it, since I have two 20 gb drives. Maybe I could try the other 20gb.

 

[equill]

... As insurance, it is also wise to install OS 9 drivers during formatting of your HDD so that you can have an alternative to OS X as a startup OS when you are troubleshooting. ...

And, conversely, if OS 9 drivers were not installed during the re-formatting and installation of Panther, the iMac cannot boot from any flavour of OS 9, let alone earlier OSs. The drivers must be installed when formatting is done. There is no installation of OS 9 drivers possible post hoc. Can you boot from Panther's Install 1 CD?

You are in the position now of needing a functional CD-ROM drive, preferably in the iMac, but an external FireWire CD-ROM can be used.

When that is installed, check that the CD drive makes audible CD-spinning noises with a CD inserted. Reset the Mac's PMU. Remove the mains cable and the PRAM battery. Check that the battery has no less than 3.3V available (preferably while it is in-circuit), or be ready to replace it with a known-new battery, regardless. Wait 20min. (overkill, but certain). Re-install the battery. Press the PMU switch on the logic board once, and once only, ie don't let it bounce, or that will count as two presses, for about 2sec. The PMU is a computer-within-a-computer, and very, very finicky. Close the Mac. Start up, with only the keyboard and mouse attached. Zap the PRAM immediately, and allow three further startup chimes before releasing the four-fingered salute. Immediately insert the OS X CD and hold down the c key to force the iMac to ignore the hard drive. If the iMac does not boot from the CD (it will take a while, so don't release the c key before the grey screen appears and the gearwheel spins), use the restart (triangle) button below the modem port and hold down the option key to see whether the CD is 'seen' as having a bootable OS that you can select as startup. If that doesn't happen, you may have a good idea why the iMac was in the garbage.

If the iMac gets through POST without beeping at you (as it apparently does), there should be no RAM problem. It's either just confused about where to find an accessible and valid start-up volume because you haven't provided one yet, or the logic board is playing FBs.

de