G3 wont install any OS

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DAC1138

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Alright, this is my first real mac since the pre-PowerPC macs. It's a G3 blue & white (yosemite).

i have currently installed 128 mb ram, but as soon as i can get an OS working, im going to install more (i need to sort out the corrupt ram from the good ram).

The problem is, i have 2 hard drives installed. Both were pulled out of old Dell PCs, so they're IDE drives. i have them both plugged into the IDE port on the mobo. I set the jumpers on the drives correctly to read slave and master. The zip drive is plugged in via IDE and so is the cd-rom drive. the only card in the PCI slots is an ati radeon card.

the problem is, when i power it on, it gives me the happy mac logo face, then flashes to a blue folder with a question mark, then back to the happy mac logo face, then back to the question mark, and it goes on and on.

i read this was because it couldnt find an OS, alright. so i get an Ubuntu (linux) cd, stick it in, it boots, but it wont install because of some hard drive problem involving the yaboot bootloader.

i know you guys might not be linux fans, so heres another thing. i go ahold of an OS X Tiger cd (number 1) stuck it in, rebooted, held down C to boot via cdrom. the thing doesnt want to install, it just sits there, cdrom flashing its lights like its working, but i can let it sit for hours and it will jsut keep on flashing.

i thought it was a bad cdrom, so i put in a spare cd burner i have, still the same problem. i tried just one hard drive as a primary (not slave) still the same flashing icon problem with an OS X cd in. i tried a SCSI pci card i got from another g3 beige tower i had, plugged in the scsi HD that was in the yosemite by default, same flashing icons.

aside from this, i flashed the pram, so thats not a problem.

im about to give up, but i decided to give these forums a shot. i want to fix the machine up to give to my parents to get them away from that pc laptop they're using that they always have trouble with.

this is about all the info i can give you, i hope someone is able to help.
 
OP
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DAC1138

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UPDATE

i also have a beige g3 that works, it seems that the scsi HD that was in the b&w g3 by default (that wasnt connected) has system 8.6 installed. i found this out when i put the drive into the beige g3. So, i took out the scsi card out of the beige, stuck it back in the b&w, plugged in the HD with system 8.6, and i got the same error icons flashing.

is this a bad ROM? any way to fix it, or does this classify as a motherboard replacement?
 
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WELCOME TO THE FORUMS

ok, first off, tiger wont install on the G3's as far as i know. Youll need osx.2. osx.3 might work on the yosemite

Second of all, your drives are from old dells, theyre going to have a filesystem mac os cant work with.

Taking the drive from the beige and putting it in the BW isnt going to work either because OS8.6 is configured for the beige not the BW.

why ubuntu wont work is beyond me, but ive alwawys had a severe hate for that distro. its NEVER worked right for me.

I had this issue once, zap the pram a few times. get ahold of osx.2, hold C while booting, and it will boot from CD.

Tiger as far as i k now willnot work on either of your machines.

So i think osx.4 is your problem at the moment. Oh, most dell harddrives are locked with some FUNKY partition table. 40mb for boot, another partition for space, a 3rd for restore. we've tried to play with em, but theres lik no deleting either
 
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DAC1138

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thanks. ill try a lower version of os x.

"Taking the drive from the beige and putting it in the BW isnt going to work either because OS8.6 is configured for the beige not the BW."
i took the hard drive out of the yosemite and stuck it in the beige and it worked. i left the hard drive in the beige, so now the beige g3 has the 9 gb HD from the yosemite. its running os 8.6. so how come when it was originally in the yosemite, it still wont boot?

you say you hate ubuntu? i love it, on the PC side anyways. its the only distro to get all of my hardware working out of the box. even my wifi card, which is a big surprise. if you use another distro on a mac, which one? have you seen the yaboot problem i got when/if you tried ubuntu on a mac?
 
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Tiger will work on G3's. The issue is the memory s/he has in the powermac? You must have at LEAST 256mb!!!
 
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DAC1138

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hmm. at the time, i only had about 192MB, but i can srounge a few 128 mb sticks and get 384 in there. ill give it a shot and post back here. but i'd like to keep the topic on the b&w g3 for now, i already know the beige works fine with os 8.6, so im happy.

-edit-
i put 384 mb in the beige g3, tried the tiger cd and it wont boot. its not a bad cd because i burned it properly (im 100% certain i burned it right) and its read properly under os 8.6. as for the b&w g3, its still the same problem as before, nothing has changed, even with more ram.
 

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Tiger will work on the B&W but not the Beige. It wants factory Firewire ports.
 

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DAC1138 said:
Alright, this is my first real mac since the pre-PowerPC macs. It's a G3 blue & white (yosemite).

i have currently installed 128 mb ram, but as soon as i can get an OS working, im going to install more (i need to sort out the corrupt ram from the good ram).

The problem is, i have 2 hard drives installed. Both were pulled out of old Dell PCs, so they're IDE drives. i have them both plugged into the IDE port on the mobo. I set the jumpers on the drives correctly to read slave and master. The zip drive is plugged in via IDE and so is the cd-rom drive. the only card in the PCI slots is an ati radeon card.

the problem is, when i power it on, it gives me the happy mac logo face, then flashes to a blue folder with a question mark, then back to the happy mac logo face, then back to the question mark, and it goes on and on.

i read this was because it couldnt find an OS, alright. so i get an Ubuntu (linux) cd, stick it in, it boots, but it wont install because of some hard drive problem involving the yaboot bootloader.

i know you guys might not be linux fans, so heres another thing. i go ahold of an OS X Tiger cd (number 1) stuck it in, rebooted, held down C to boot via cdrom. the thing doesnt want to install, it just sits there, cdrom flashing its lights like its working, but i can let it sit for hours and it will jsut keep on flashing.

i thought it was a bad cdrom, so i put in a spare cd burner i have, still the same problem. i tried just one hard drive as a primary (not slave) still the same flashing icon problem with an OS X cd in. i tried a SCSI pci card i got from another g3 beige tower i had, plugged in the scsi HD that was in the yosemite by default, same flashing icons.

aside from this, i flashed the pram, so thats not a problem.

im about to give up, but i decided to give these forums a shot. i want to fix the machine up to give to my parents to get them away from that pc laptop they're using that they always have trouble with.

this is about all the info i can give you, i hope someone is able to help.


Does that B&W have a Revision 1 or 2 motherboard? The Rev 1's had problems with 2 hard drives hooked in at the same time.
 
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I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this yet, i went back & re-read & didn't see it mentioned anywhere. Along with the other requirements mentioned such as needing 256 MB of RAM, & a Mac with built in Firewire, you also need a Mac with a built in DVD-Rom drive (Unless you send in more money to Apple for CD-Roms). Maybe check the original media to see if it is in CD-Rom, or DVD-Rom format. Below are the requirements listed on Apple's website. :)

Mac OS X Version 10.4 requires a Macintosh with:

* PowerPC G3, G4, or G5 processor
* Built-in FireWire
* At least 256MB of physical RAM
* A built-in display or a display connected to an Apple-supplied video card supported by your computer
* At least 3.0 GB of available space on your hard drive; 4GB of disk space if you install XCode 2 developer tools
* DVD drive for installation (get CD media for $9.95)

As mentioned before by others, i would suggest a prior version of Mac OS X such as 10.3 Panther. :)
 
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Here is a guess, (but one that comes from my own experience).

The revision 1 Yosimite motherboard really doesn't like having two drives on the built in IDE channel. Try removing one (or both) and booting from your Tiger DVDs (you do have a DVD drive don't you?). If that works use drive setup to reformat the IDE drive. I have one of these machines and it doesn't even work every time I reboot with two IDE drives connected to a PCI ATA host adapter.

Good luck let us know if you figure this one out.
 
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DAC1138

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ive only had one hard drive in for a while now. as for the mobo revision, im note sure which one, i think it might be rev.2.

i dont have the dvd version of tiget, i got the 4 cd version, in which i only burned cd 1 because i didnt plan on doing a full install, just wanted to fix the HD up.
 
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DAC1138 said:
which i only burned cd 1 because i didnt plan on doing a full install, just wanted to fix the HD up.


That is likely your problem. I have never in all of my years of using Macs, seen anyone successfully use a burned copy of an OS disk for an install. I would assume it is possible, but I have never seen it. Do you have the originals? You will want to use those to install as copied disks rarely boot...at least from what I have seen. Just make sure that you are using a retail full install...not a restore disk that came with another Mac.
 
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DAC1138

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weird. the linux cd was burned the same way on the same type of cd at the same speed. but then again, i know macs use a different CD filesystem, which might explain it.

but then, why doesnt system 8.6 boot? the HD that was originally in the b&w (now in the beige) wont even boot, it just gets the same flashing icons.

this might help, i got 2 pics of the current setup.

http://www.dac1138.5gigs.com/images/g31.JPG
http://www.dac1138.5gigs.com/images/g32.JPG

3 of the 4 ram sticks are 128 mb, and the last is 64 mb. i borrowed them from an older compaq i have. i pulled the drive bay out to make it easier to access the drive. the 2 pci cards in there are the ati video card and the scsi adapter.
 

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DAC1138 said:
weird. the linux cd was burned the same way on the same type of cd at the same speed. but then again, i know macs use a different CD filesystem, which might explain it.

but then, why doesnt system 8.6 boot? the HD that was originally in the b&w (now in the beige) wont even boot, it just gets the same flashing icons.

I am not saying this to step on anyone, just my experiences. I always make Backups of my Expensive Software or OS Discs. I can not afford to have something happen to one of the CDs or DVD's, so I always make backups. I have a backup of Jaguar and Panther off my origional discs and both will boot and install fine on any Mac in the house. I have not backed Tiger yet as I will have to install my Plextor back in my G4 as the DVD is in Mac format, but will be doing that soon.

If the CDs are copied correctly they should boot up just fine. Did you copy on a PC or a Mac? I know the OSX Install CD's are in hfs+ and will not even read on my pc's.
 
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The flashing "?" you are seeing means that it is either missing or something is wrong with the System folder. Somehow it became corrupt, could be bad extensions or a multitude of other reasons. If you had the original disks for the iMac, you could boot from that CD and do a clean install, which essentially only replaces the System folder and not the entire OS.
 
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DAC1138

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the mac cds were in the HFS format, like you said. so i had to convert them from that to an ISO file in order to burn them. when i converted the cd, it also carried over the bootloader information.

got a question though. the only format linux comes in is ISO. so linux is burnable on linux, windows, and Mac OS. does this mean macs can boot from ISO cds, burned with the iso 9660 (or whatever) filesystem?
 
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DAC1138 said:
the mac cds were in the HFS format, like you said. so i had to convert them from that to an ISO file in order to burn them. when i converted the cd, it also carried over the bootloader information.

got a question though. the only format linux comes in is ISO. so linux is burnable on linux, windows, and Mac OS. does this mean macs can boot from ISO cds, burned with the iso 9660 (or whatever) filesystem?

Macs will boot linux from ISO, but will (I'm told) only boot mac install discs from HFS+. Still doesn't explain why your OS 8.6 SCSI disk won't work.

Here is one thing to try. With the SCSI HD installed. Boot holding down the option key. If this is the right kind of keyboard voodoo, it will give you a list of all of the available boot drives (in this case just the SCSI drive).

Also holding down C durring boot forces the mac to try to boot from CD.

Good Luck
 

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