New to the imac g3 tower

[LilFox]

alright boys im new to this old imac power pc stuff haha

i got a free imac g3 i googled what type it is and i got M6665LL/A* Model M5183 PowerMac1,1 now it didnt come with a hard drive (not sure if that is good or bad)

so i looked around found a HD with tiger installed but comes to find out it doesnt work

now i found out it wont work with my model but any way i can use it to freshly install OSX or do i need to get OS 9 and a other HD that is is meant for this model?

just need a helping hand here so i can get this baby booted up just want it working nothing fancy just to boot up and use (collector)

it is in panic mode and nothing is happening just looking for a way to boot a new OS on the hard drive as stated than if i can OSX tiger or later 

give me your tip! 

 

[Gorgonops]

so i looked around found a HD with tiger installed but comes to find out it doesnt work

Did your drive with Tiger on it come from an Intel Mac, or a newer G4 tower? A Blue & White G3 (which is what the model number translates to) is compatible with 10.4 and should be able to boot off an OS image installed on another Mac with the following limitations:

1. If the disk came from one of the newest G4 towers (Quicksilver or later) or a G5 and is larger than ~120 gigabytes then it's incompatible with the G3's IDE controller. Only drives smaller than 120GB are fully compatible.
   
2. In my personal experience the B&W can be picky about hard disks in general. If it doesn't like your hard disk (I've particularly had issues with IBM/Hitachi drives) you'll sometimes experience this annoying condition where you'll be able to access the hard drive if you boot from a CD (and even install OS X) but you'll get a big (/) "NO" symbol when you try to boot OS X.
   
3. A disk with the Intel version of Tiger won't boot on a Power Mac. 10.5 was the only version of OS X for which the same installation could boot on either PowerPC or Intel machines, but 10.5 doesn't run on the B&W and even on compatible machines there were limitations related to disk partitioning.
   

Any old retail version of OS 9 or OS X (10.4 or earlier) should install and run fine on a B&W as long as you have a compatible hard disk installed.

 

[LilFox]

Did your drive with Tiger on it come from an Intel Mac, or a newer G4 tower? A Blue & White G3 (which is what the model number translates to) is compatible with 10.4 and should be able to boot off an OS image installed on another Mac with the following limitations:

1. If the disk came from one of the newest G4 towers (Quicksilver or later) or a G5 and is larger than ~120 gigabytes then it's incompatible with the G3's IDE controller. Only drives smaller than 120GB are fully compatible.
   
2. In my personal experience the B&W can be picky about hard disks in general. If it doesn't like your hard disk (I've particularly had issues with IBM/Hitachi drives) you'll sometimes experience this annoying condition where you'll be able to access the hard drive if you boot from a CD (and even install OS X) but you'll get a big (/) "NO" symbol when you try to boot OS X.
   
3. A disk with the Intel version of Tiger won't boot on a Power Mac. 10.5 was the only version of OS X for which the same installation could boot on either PowerPC or Intel machines, but 10.5 doesn't run on the B&W and even on compatible machines there were limitations related to disk partitioning.
   

Any old retail version of OS 9 or OS X (10.4 or earlier) should install and run fine on a B&W as long as you have a compatible hard disk installed.

one hard drive is 13 GB with OSX 10.4 tiger but i get a skip symbol and the other HD is 120 GB with a 10.5 leap so guess that one wont work anyways but i cant use the drive? since its 120 or gotta be smaller?? other than that the first drive was pulled from a g3 but again giving me a skip symbol i also got a retail version of tiger/panther? 10.3 

 

[Gorgonops]

If you format it and install an OS on it while it's installed in the B&W I'd be cautiously optimistic that the 120GB drive would work. (But, yeah, 10.5 is a no-go.) If you have a retail copy of 10.3 handy and you don't care what's on the drive I'd suggest trying to install it just to make sure everything's working. (You will probably *want* 10.4 on it if you want to run OS X because there's basically nothing out there anymore for 10.3, but it should work as a smoke test.) After booting the installation disk use the utility to wipe/format the drive clean before proceeding.

 

[LilFox]

If you format it and install an OS on it while it's installed in the B&W I'd be cautiously optimistic that the 120GB drive would work. (But, yeah, 10.5 is a no-go.) If you have a retail copy of 10.3 handy and you don't care what's on the drive I'd suggest trying to install it just to make sure everything's working. (You will probably *want* 10.4 on it if you want to run OS X because there's basically nothing out there anymore for 10.3, but it should work as a smoke test.) After booting the installation disk use the utility to wipe/format the drive clean before proceeding.

ohh ok so C or opiton key is to boot the CD drive right? if my CD drive it should load into the disc? or what cause i tried that and nothing and just goes into panic again so know any best way to do the intall *sorry for the questions* 

 

[Gorgonops]

Holding "C" should boot the CD-ROM drive, yes. If that's not working I'd suggest disconnecting the hard drive so the CD is the only boot option. If that doesn't work then your machine probably has some sort of hardware problem; if it *does* work my best suggestion would be to completely blank the hard drive in another computer to rule out any possibility that there's something about the format on the drive that's freaking out the firmware when the drive is enumerated and breaking things. (Formatting the drive in a PC would work, as would installing it in a Mac and re-partitioning it with a dos MBR partition table, something you can do with OS X.)

 

[LilFox]

Holding "C" should boot the CD-ROM drive, yes. If that's not working I'd suggest disconnecting the hard drive so the CD is the only boot option. If that doesn't work then your machine probably has some sort of hardware problem; if it *does* work my best suggestion would be to completely blank the hard drive in another computer to rule out any possibility that there's something about the format on the drive that's freaking out the firmware when the drive is enumerated and breaking things. (Formatting the drive in a PC would work, as would installing it in a Mac and re-partitioning it with a dos MBR partition table, something you can do with OS X.)

unplugged the HD and it was just flashing a mac file so dunno if that booted the CD or not