G3 problem.

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Rocket7795

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I must confess first off that I know very little about mac's. I do know a lot about the x86 platform and am well versed in Windows, and the PC world. I am somewhat familiar with Linux but to call me a linux lamer would be an overstatment. Anyways, with the credentials out of the way. I somewhat stumbled into the Mac world when I purchased what I thought to be a dead G3 350 off ebay for $40. Well to my surprise when I plugged it in to see if it was indeed dead, it came on and posted. However, I cannot get it to install an operating system for anything. I have ISO's of OS X but, have been unable to install it. I've tried vairous PPC linux distro's to no avail as well. Originally when I got this machine the hdd was gone. So I threw in a Maxtor 10GB drive that I had laying around. I however have no idea how to tell the machine it's there or the first clue as to what I'm doing. Any help you guys/gals can offer would be greatly appreciated.
 
Benjamindaines

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Rocket7795 said:
I must confess first off that I know very little about mac's. I do know a lot about the x86 platform and am well versed in Windows, and the PC world. I am somewhat familiar with Linux but to call me a linux lamer would be an overstatment. Anyways, with the credentials out of the way. I somewhat stumbled into the Mac world when I purchased what I thought to be a dead G3 350 off ebay for $40. Well to my surprise when I plugged it in to see if it was indeed dead, it came on and posted. However, I cannot get it to install an operating system for anything. I have ISO's of OS X but, have been unable to install it. I've tried vairous PPC linux distro's to no avail as well. Originally when I got this machine the hdd was gone. So I threw in a Maxtor 10GB drive that I had laying around. I however have no idea how to tell the machine it's there or the first clue as to what I'm doing. Any help you guys/gals can offer would be greatly appreciated.
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That might be what the seller meant by "dead" correct me if im wrong but didnt the G3s have ROM chips? There might be a problem with it.
 
jhelm007

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Rocket7795 said:
I somewhat stumbled into the Mac world when I purchased what I thought to be a dead G3 350 off ebay for $40. Well to my surprise when I plugged it in to see if it was indeed dead, it came on and posted. However, I cannot get it to install an operating system for anything.
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Is it blue or beige? either way you will probably have to get OS9 or X working and install boot x before you can install linux. Macs are (sometimes) tricky that way.

The blue G3s (if they are working) will install panther regardless of the firmware etc.

If it is beige it has a rom that the OSx 10.3+ installers don't really like. If you can install os 9 you can use Xpostfacto to install panther or tiger. Jaguar should install no matter what. again... if it isn't totaly dead.

good luck
 
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are you sure your hardrive is working.. since it has been laying around for a while, maybe there was some kind of damage done to it.
 
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Rocket7795

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No it's white and blue. All appears to be operating normally, I just can't get the OS installed, unfortunately I don't have a copy of OS 9. I'll look around and see if I can scare one up. Thanks.
 
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Rocket7795 said:
No it's white and blue. All appears to be operating normally, I just can't get the OS installed.
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What exactly are the problems you're encountering when attempting to install OS X?
 
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Rocket7795

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Padawan said:
What exactly are the problems you're encountering when attempting to install OS X?
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Well I can get OS X installer to boot, but it can't see the IDE maxtor 7200rpm 10GB drive. Which is formatted in NTFS because the last machine it was in I formatted it in windows. Other than that, as far as I can tell, it works.
 
rs2sensen

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The NTFS could be the problem, I know Panther supports a limited read of it, but without Panther, the mac may not be able to read the drive. Is there any way you can reformat to FAT 32?

If you can get Panther running, this is a driver set or something that should allow NTFS, not sure exactly what it is though... http://sourceforge.net/projects/ntfsosx/
 
Padawan

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Rocket7795 said:
Well I can get OS X installer to boot, but it can't see the IDE maxtor 7200rpm 10GB drive. Which is formatted in NTFS because the last machine it was in I formatted it in windows. Other than that, as far as I can tell, it works.
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Once you have it booted from the OS X installation disk, have you tried running Disk Utility and formatting the Maxtor before attempting the installation?
 
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Rocket7795

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Padawan said:
Once you have it booted from the OS X installation disk, have you tried running Disk Utility and formatting the Maxtor before attempting the installation?
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Yeah I finally got the disk formatted, I just can't get any OS to install on it. I've tried 10.x and 9.1, 9.2.2. So I just bought a copy of 8.0 gonna see if that'll work on it. If not then I've just got a big paper weight.
 
dtravis7

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Where is the install hanging up at? What does it say?
 
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Rocket7795

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dtravis7 said:
Where is the install hanging up at? What does it say?
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Right when it starts to write the packages to the drive. I've got it to see the drive finally, it just won't install. I'm starting to think a firmware update is in order.
 
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Rocket7795

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Update:

Well I tried to install 10.3 on it. It does the same thing, starts to write the packages to the drive then it crashes. I bought OS 8 off ebay for $15 gonna see if that might help. I need to update the firmware I'm almost certain of. Unfortunately, there's no way to update the firmware without an operating system. :mad:
 

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