Is my iMac dead?

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Feb 15, 2009
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sweden
Your Mac's Specs
ibook G4, Imac g3 spec edition
Yesterday when i started my Imac G3 (summer 2001 edition OS 10.5.3) there first was the pizzawheel spinning and spinning. I restarted the computer and there was the flashing question mark.
Lost harddisck i thouht and tried to boot it up from installationdisc. Starting up with c key depressed. But the only result was a round arrow to the left and a right arrow to the right.
No prompt commandos seem to work.
I have tried to go to T modea and use firewireback but no reaction .
I have zapped the pram via open firmware no reaction. I have installed a fresh pram battery. No result.
What´s wrong? Is it dead.
Help:Grimmace:
 
Joined
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Ithaca NY
Your Mac's Specs
13 inch alMacBook 2GHz C2D 4G DDR3, 1.25GHz G4 eMac
Dur... 10.5.3 on that machine is just a bad idea. lol
 
Joined
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Tampa Bay Area
Your Mac's Specs
PowerMac G4 DP 867MHz MDD, 660GB HD Space, 1.5GB RAM, Radeon 9000 PRO, Superdrive
Yesterday when i started my Imac G3 (summer 2001 edition OS 10.5.3) there first was the pizzawheel spinning and spinning. I restarted the computer and there was the flashing question mark.
Lost harddisck i thouht and tried to boot it up from installationdisc. Starting up with c key depressed. But the only result was a round arrow to the left and a right arrow to the right.
No prompt commandos seem to work.
I have tried to go to T modea and use firewireback but no reaction .
I have zapped the pram via open firmware no reaction. I have installed a fresh pram battery. No result.
What´s wrong? Is it dead.
Help:Grimmace:

dude, how long have you had 10.5 installed, that should not even be possible. Leopard requires at least an 867MHz G4, and based on my experience with my power mac, 867 might be a long shot (I've got dual 867 and it only just runs smoothly) Try loading from a Tiger or earlier OS disk and see what happens, those support G3 processors officially.
 

pigoo3

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Your Mac's Specs
2017 15" MBP, 16gig ram, 1TB SSD, OS 10.15
Flashing "?" means you got System Folder / OS issues.

OS 10.5.x is not really meant to be run on a G3 iMac...I wouldn't run anything higher that 10.4.11.

I would recommend doing a fresh OS install of some sort, nothing newer than 10.4.11.

Good luck,

- Nick
 

dtravis7


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Your Mac's Specs
MacMini M-1 MacOS Monterey, iMac 2010 27"Quad I7 , MBPLate2011, iPad Pro10.5", iPhoneSE
Yesterday when i started my Imac G3 (summer 2001 edition OS 10.5.3) there first was the pizzawheel spinning and spinning. I restarted the computer and there was the flashing question mark.
Lost harddisck i thouht and tried to boot it up from installationdisc. Starting up with c key depressed. But the only result was a round arrow to the left and a right arrow to the right.
No prompt commandos seem to work.
I have tried to go to T modea and use firewireback but no reaction .
I have zapped the pram via open firmware no reaction. I have installed a fresh pram battery. No result.
What´s wrong? Is it dead.
Help:Grimmace:

I agree with the others that 10.5 on that hardware is not a good idea. But that is not the issue here.

It really sounds like your hard drive died to me.

You hold down C at boot and get that menu? That menu if is brought up holding down OPTION at boot. Are you using an Apple keyboard?

The first thing here is to get the machine to boot from the OSX CD/DVD and run Disk Utility and see if the drive is shot or even shows up at all. That blank menu with the arrows tells me that drive is dead.
 

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