iMac g3 indigo.. won't boot os9 cd

[alexgardiner]

Hey all,

My first time here.. So hello all, nice to be here :d

I've been having a look about the board for a solution to a problem, but wondered if anybody could shed some light on a boot problem i have with an elderly iMac g3 indigo.

Basically I've tried zapping the pram, i am holding c down when trying to boot my os9 cd and all i get is a little icon with a '?' then a smiley face in an os 9 style blue/purple folder icon. This icon keeps continually flashing.

The machine will however boot my os x cd and i can get into disc utility, but can't obviously install anything because i need to run the iMac firmware update.

Ultimately I would like to use os x on to the machine.

Incidentally I don't believe there is a problem with the HDD becuase the os x disc utility can erase and format the drive okay.

Any ideas?

Pram battery? logic board?

Cheers,

Alex :headphone

[rman]

Is the OS 9 CDROM a bootable disk?

I would have to locate my disk to be sure, but I remember one of the disk is not bootable.

[snikro]

Is the OS 9 CDROM a bootable disk?

In my experience, os9 is a bootable disc. Funny thing is, I was having problems booting from the OSX cd on my old g3, while the os9 was fine. I forget if those old iMacs can do target disk mode, but if you can't solve your cd problem, maybe you can use that.