I need expert help.

I got a power macintosh g3 / powerPC running mac os 8.6. 256 megs of ram. Well, actually my dad got it for me from this design group that was upgrading. Anyway, I've been messing around in the hardware and can't get the cd-rom drive to work. I even tried another drive. I've got everything configured right (i think), but when (or if) it boots, the cd doesn't exist. I put a disc in and the drive spins up a little bit, then stops, and nothing appears on the desktop. I had it working once with no jumper installed, but now when I do that, the monitor stays off and it doesn't boot.
I have the drive hooked up to the motherboard by the ata cable, the power cords all plugged into the drive, and the jumper set. It's the only drive on the ata cable, nothing's upside down, i checked. When the jumper is not in or set to slave, the mac powers on, the monitor blinks on, then into standby, then nothing for about five minutes, then I turn it off. When the jumper is set to master or cable select, the mac boots up, but the drive doesn't exist.

A few other problems... when I had the cd drive working, I plugged in a windows-formatted hard drive (yes, the right way, the mac tried to read it) and stuck in my os x 10.1 cd and held down the c-key. I got the floppy with the blinking question mark.
I have os x installed on another hard drive (4 gig), but now the drive spins up, stops, and gives me the ? floppy.

If anyone has any ideas to help get any of this to work, please let me know. Is there any way to get the mac to tell me what it's doing while it's booting? Can you install windows 98 and os x on the same hd and swap them? it's a 120gb drive, there aughta be room for both. AAARRRGGHHHH!!!

Thanks very much.
--Dvd

I think you need to upgrad the firmware... just try that you can get it from apples support site.

i'm slightly lost... I don't have a NORMAL apple... it's almost like a windows machine, with a tower on it's side and a monitor that connects in the back. I don't want to be a pain, but anytime i'm on apple's website, I get so totally lost i can hardly get back home. i don't know what model i have.

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Apple... they're not like PCs 'round here

look for your model on lowendmac.com and post that information there.. I will then get you a link to your firmware from apples site if it is indeed there.

The list of all available firmware updates is here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86117


However, the only one that would be available for your needs, is this one here

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25176

I booted (no cd support) & pulled up the system profiler. It says the machine id is 510, mower mac g3 series, 266mhz, built-in fpu, with ROM revision $77D.45F2. Maybe it's http://lowendmac.com/ppc/g3.shtml? It had that rom revision under "oddities."

I did have os x working once upon a time... now i think that drive is gone. (whiiiiirrrrrrr.... click. Question mark. Whiiiiirrrrrrr.... click. Question mark.)
And I don't have any scsi cables. ???

Fixed. Aim support.

How: Fooled around with jumpers.. Reset pRAM and then rebooted and drive showed up.

for mac newbies, reset pram is option-apple-p-r at boot. The os x drive was, as I suspected, dead. Thanks a million, PowerBookG4.

dvd said:

for mac newbies, reset pram is option-apple-p-r at boot. The os x drive was, as I suspected, dead....

Click to expand...

Just to clarify a bit, the steps and keyboard combos for resetting the Parameter RAM (PRAM) is a little different depending on which model Mac you have.
You can check Apple's support site if you are ever unsure of what the combo or steps are for your Mac.
Yeah, I suspected that your drive was dead, too.
Glad to hear that you got it worked out, though.