OS 9 will NOT boot from CDROM

hi guys. i am trying to resurrect some old macs for my uncle who used them many years ago with various autocad and design programs. he wants to be able to access all of his old files. i've cannibalized a few of the machines (various power pcs and a few beige G3s) and have one working G3. i have accessed all of the files and compiled them onto one dvd for backup purposes. in the meantime the main hdd failed and so i bought a new one. i am trying to install mac OS 9 onto the machine and the CD drive is not being recognized by the computer. it simply refuses to boot from the retail OS disc. i've tried holding down "c" at startup to no avail. i have also tried "shift+cmd+option+del" also to no avail. all i get is a flashing folder with an alternating question mark and happy mac face.

the new hdd also has OS 9 installed on it, but it will not boot that way either. it just shows the same flashing folder. i figure it may be the jumper settings on the hdd or cd drive, or even a bad motherboard, but the computer was working a few weeks ago. any ideas?

Make shure the jumper on the new HD is set right. it may be master or CS depending on the mac. The G3s are IDE drives older power macs are SCSI.
Load the CD and then restart Power+Control +Apple key. Then hold down the C key before the Chime. Also try the Option key. Its possible the CD rom is bad...that happens.

That flashing ? folder means the Mac can't find any operating system.

Is the install CD you have an OEM? If so, it may be designed to only work with the type of Mac that it originally came with. Apple unfortunately did that a lot.

Or it could be that the CD drive is not working.

Or perhaps your new hard drive is not formatted properly for the Mac you are putting it in. I'm not certain that some older Macs could even use the HFS+ (Mac extended) format.

The nice thing about OS 9 is that you can just copy the system folder, Applications folder, and Documents folder from another computer or backup disk (without "installing") to your hard drive (without having to erase anything or reformat) and then boot from it. So, if you have OS 9 installed on a working Mac, just copy those folders to the hard drive of your other Macs. You may have to take out the hard drive and use an external enclosure to copy, then put it back in, or use Firewire Target mode if they have Firewire, to gain access to the hard drive.

Jude

Theres no boot from Firewire in Beige G3's. He may have a USB card installed and could move files from a USB CD drive or flash drive. The only other external hookup is SCSI or Ethernet. The OS 9 install disc should read version 9.0 and be white with an orange 9 on the front.

Also, I seem to remember reading that some older Power Macs can only install a maximum of 9.0.4, so if the CD has a later version, perhaps that is the problem. Have you tried installing OS 8.6?

Jude

PCI Power Macs can run up up to 9.1. Anything over that you need xpostdefacto. I would stay with 8.6 or 9.