03-18-2010, 01:18 AM

I have recently purchased a imac g3 tray loading from a pawn shop. right now its running on Mac os 8.6. I wanted to upgrade the software on there so I bought Mac os x snow panther , and put the disc in and nothing happened. I then tried to put in some other disc I had such as games and music and still nothing happens. Ive tried to select the cd for the boot up menu from systems options and the only options I have are mac hd and network hd. Then I could not access the boot menu to try to load it from there. Is there something wrong with my cd rom drive or is it something else? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

03-18-2010, 01:43 AM

"Snow panther?" Oh dear, I'll be chuckling about that one for a while.

I'm afraid Snow Leopard is for Intel-only Mac computers of very recent vintage and does not work with 12-year old computers such as the one you've purchased. I sincerely hope you did not pay more than $25 for that machine, as it is essentially worthless.

Secondly, I'd say that iMac G3 (which, from your description, may be one of the original iMacs circa 1998) may only have a CD drive, not a DVD drive, so try sticking a music CD in there and see what happens.

If that doesn't work, then I'd say yes, the optical drive is toast, probably due to old age.

I don't mean to be dismissive or "sound" pretentious, but given the age of that machine and its incredibly limited potential, if I were you I'd simply return it and get your money back. Apart from an object d'art, the original iMac is of little practical value anymore and hasn't been for ages (in "computer years").

If you're looking to buy an inexpensive Mac, there are lots of options on much more recent machines that will be able to use the internet effectively, run modern OSes and modern software, and generally perform as a computer user would expect. They won't be as cheap as (I hope) that original iMac was, but with some guidance from the fine folks at this forum you'll be sure to score a very good deal on something made in the latter half of this decade.