Power Macintosh G3 help please

Hello all, I am new here and new to the Mac world, I will be buying a Macbook soon so I might as well get into it from now. Anyway, this thread concerns a Mac desktop which I got in an auction lot, I can fix pc's but have absolutely no idea of Macs so I'd appreciate anyone's help in trying to get this thing going please.

First question, when I turn the power on I am seeing a very small icon in the middle of the screen alternating between a "face" and a "?" What do I have to do to go any further please?

The Mac can't find a System folder to get everything going. I would say that someone has wiped the hard drive without reinstalling an OS.

Is the G3 a beige desktop machine or a blue-white tower? For either of them, you need to get an OS install disk (CD) with either OS 9.2 (Classic), or OS 10.3 (Panther) - don't bother with earlier OS X. And be sure to get the full install versions of the OS, not the upgrade or restore disks.

Thanks, yes it is a beige desktop with transparent grey and Aqua colored plastic casing all around.

is this it?

Apple Power Macintosh G3 350 (Blue & White) Specs (Power Mac G3 - Blue & White - M6668LL/A*) @ EveryMac.com

as hughvane says you could run OS X 10.3 panther on that model, you should be able to pick up retail disks for panther off ebay

Yes, that is it.

If all else is ok it sounds like there is no OS on the hard drive. Like others have said you need to get an OS and install it. Panther 10.3 would be good for that machine. You can probably find it very cheap on Ebay. Just be sure it's a Full Retail copy. Black CD's.

Ok guys, appreciate the help, will look for the OS recommended, will get back here if any other issues.

There should be a label on the back that gives the specs like CPU speed and RAM that is shipped with. If you can find that let us know the basic specs if you would.

400 MHZ/1 M cache
128mg sd ram
9gb ultra2 scsi/cd-rom

Like in a pc, is there a way for me to get into the BIOS?

mikehende said:

Yes, that is it.

Click to expand...

A G3 b/w, also known as Yosemite. They are very good machines that will accommodate up to 1 Gb memory (4 x 256 Mb), up to 2 IDE hard drives (128 Gb or less), a SCSI hard drive, a Zip drive. You can even upgrade the ZIF socket processor to 1 GHz if you want to spend the money. Like most tower machines, great to work on, the hinged side panel opens to expose nearly every working part.

The only negative I think is the native processor speed. Even the 450 MHz one was not good with movies and graphic-intensive apps.

So does the mac work like a pc in that you press F22 or F10 or whatever and you can go into the BIOS?

No. The MacOS is well and truly kept safe from such intrusions. However, people more knowledgeable than I can tell you what can be done through Terminal, which is available only to OS X.

For OS 9 there was/is a terrific application called ResEdit (Resource Editing) with which you could create mayhem if you didn't know what you were doing. OS 9 operated with two 'forks' - 1) Resource and 2) Data.

The firmwear on modern Macs resides on the hard drive and not on a chip. Thats why its so important to have the right 'flavor' of install disc. No need to mess with the bios and never punch dos code into a Mac. Saw some PC guy try to F disk a Mac once,really messed it up.

Your G3 Powermac and all Power PC Macs for that matter use Open Firmware. It's not the same as a Bios and there is no key that you hit to get you to the settings. There is a way into Open Firmware but unless you really know what you are doing it would be a good idea not to mess with it.

No Bios at all. The Intel Macs use EFI Firmware that Intel has been after people to use now for ages but PC's still stick with the same basic BIOS that the XT and 286 used, just a bit more modern and more options.

So the basic answer is no, no Bios to poke around in.

Very well explained Guys!!