Need some assistance with a Summer 2000 iMac G3

[ValTheBee]

Hey all!
I have a 500Mhz graphite iMac G3 and its just confusing the heck out of me

when i got it the OS was crashing, so i used Firewire to install a new version and it worked, but then i wanted to install OS 9 and all the CDs ive tried have all failed for one reason or another, using the iMacs drive or a G4 powermac over firewrire

And now, trying to install OS X on its own CD drive is failing with kernal Panics, with 10.2, 10.3 and 10.4 all failing, and OS X 10.0 will boot installer, being to install then crash with a memory access exception.

So im now wondering if i have a RAM fault or perhaps something more sinister

 

[Byrd]

The optical drives in iMac are highly prone to failure, and pain picky about certain drive media - are you using writable CDs? Try new media; is the HD known good.

 

[ValTheBee]

The optical drives in iMac are highly prone to failure, and pain picky about certain drive media - are you using writable CDs? Is the HD known good.

Im using normal CD-Rs that've worked a-ok in other macs, the HDD im unsure of

 

[mikes-macs]

The Mac OS 9 for iMacs are specifically for that model and are part of a restore. Retail Mac OS 9 Install won’t work properly. You will have better luck using the restore/install CD for that model. Furthermore drive setup on the restore CD will format your HDD. As mentioned above, iMac CD drives fail and are very picky about burned CDs.
I suggest you find the correct restore CD for your iMac model and try to boot from it.

Mac OS X 10.2.8 is fine on G3 iMacs so you should not be having an issue unless you have underlying hardware memory problems.

I think iMacs of that era are prone to the 128 GB maximum hard drive limit and Mac OS X should be installed in the first partition of your HDD and this partition can be no larger than 8 GBs.

 

[herd]

How much RAM does the computer have?

 

[ValTheBee]

The Mac OS 9 for iMacs are specifically for that model and are part of a restore. Retail Mac OS 9 Install won’t work properly. You will have better luck using the restore/install CD for that model. Furthermore drive setup on the restore CD will format your HDD. As mentioned above, iMac CD drives fail and are very picky about burned CDs.
I suggest you find the correct restore CD for your iMac model and try to boot from it.

Mac OS X 10.2.8 is fine on G3 iMacs so you should not be having an issue unless you have underlying hardware memory problems.

I think iMacs of that era are prone to the 128 GB maximum hard drive limit and Mac OS X should be installed in the first partition of your HDD and this partition can be no larger than 8 GBs.

I did download and burn the iMacs restore CD, and made sure it was my Summer 2000 one, and still nothing, id selecrt the disc in boot picker, and it would immediately go back to boot picker seemingly without trying

I have the original 30 GB HDD in there which sounds fairly healthy

 

[ValTheBee]

How much RAM does the computer have?

From memory, about 320MB~

 

[mikes-macs]

I did download and burn the iMacs restore CD

Sounds like you did it right. There must be something wrong with the iMac. I don't know what else to try.

 

[ValTheBee]

Sounds like you did it right. There must be something wrong with the iMac. I don't know what else to try.

I have a G4 Digital audio i could pull some RAM out of, should i see if that makes a difference?

And a brand new clock battery

 

[joevt]

I think iMacs of that era are prone to the 128 GB maximum hard drive limit and Mac OS X should be installed in the first partition of your HDD and this partition can be no larger than 8 GBs.

It might be possible to override the Mac OS X HeathrowATA driver with a patched version to enable LBA48. It would only work for Mac OS X though. Open Firmware needs a separate patch. I'm working on the Mac OS X and Open Firmware patches now.

For Open Firmware, getting beyond the 8 GB CHS limit is a small patch that can fit in nvramrc. To get beyond the 128 GB CHS or LBA28 limit requires a patch loaded from disk.

I don't know if Mac OS 9 can be patched. If not, then you have to make sure it doesn't try to use a partition that extends beyond the LBA28 limit.

Below are ATA patches for Open Firmware 2.4 (for nvramrc, you would eliminate blank lines and comments). This enables LBA28 support.

\ Patch ATA bugs. There are two controllers so patch both of them.
\ There are two disk devices per controller but the second is identical
\ to the first so use peer to navigate to the sibling.

200 value lba-bit \ original value was 20 which is incorrect.

: patch-ata
\ Fix ata-read-blocks to handle the case where start-block > my-capacity.
\ Note: mesh has a similar problem in Beige G3 ROMs.
" : arbp { buf start } dup start u< if >r 3drop 0 r> dup dup then u> 0 ;" eval
" ' ata-read-blocks 2C + ' arbp C + brpatch" eval \ Replace u> in ata-read-blocks with jump to dup in arbp which is after (pushlocals).
" ' arbp 3C + ' ata-read-blocks 30 + brpatch" eval \ Replace 0 in arbp with jump back to ata-read-blocks.

\ Fix ata-read-blocks to detect lba correctly and set the capacity accordingly.
\ lbap ( capabilities 0x20 -- (capabilities & lba-bit) )
" : lbap drop dup 200 and if identify-data >identify.capacity 4c@-le to my-capacity then lba-bit and ;" eval
" ' ata-open 148 + ' lbap blpatch" eval \ patch the and word in ata-open

\ Fix ata-convert-lba to set LBA bit in ATA device head register.
\ aclp ( head deviceheadaddr -- head deviceheadaddr )
" : aclp swap f and e0 or swap c! ;" eval
" ' ata-convert-lba 74 + ' aclp blpatch" eval \ patch last c! of if in ata-open
;


dev ide0/disk patch-ata
active-package peer to active-package patch-ata
dev ide1/disk patch-ata
active-package peer to active-package patch-ata
device-end

Open Firmware always had LBA28 support. It didn't work because it was testing the wrong bit from the IDENTIFY results and wasn't setting the LBA bit in ATA device head register.

 

[mikes-macs]

I have a G4 Digital audio

Since you have a G4 you can put the iMacs' HDD in it and restore the iMac OS 9 to a partition on it using the G4. I believe it's a Apple Software Restore Disk Image? Just copy the contents to the HDD.

Does your burned iMac restore CD mount on the G4?

 

[ValTheBee]

Since you have a G4 you can put the iMacs' HDD in it and restore the iMac OS 9 to a partition on it using the G4. I believe it's a Apple Software Restore Disk Image? Just copy the contents to the HDD

The only restore image i can find seems to be in multiple CDs, i tried using a G3 with that disc and it said something along the lines of configuration not supported :c

 

[mikes-macs]

It might be possible to override the Mac OS X HeathrowATA driver with a patched version

Very cool.

 

[ValTheBee]

Update:
Some progress has been made
I reseated the RAM and swapped the slots they were in, inserted a unlabled CD that turned out to be MacOS 9.2 and its at least getting further than it was