So, I bought 8 iMac G3's...

Yep, as the title says I bought 8 iMac G3's. Just brought them home about a half hour ago. I paid $25 for the whole lot, which isn't too bad imo. The guy also threw in a few apple keyboards, mice, and an airport extreme base station.

I'll be posting in this thread about all of the individual problems I'm having with these machines, as to not clutter up the forum. (and believe me, there are gonna be some problems)

At first I was thinking...WOW...8 iMac G3's for $25 bucks. But then when you mentioned them having various issues...I'm wondering how many you'll end up with that work 100%.

It will be interesting to see how things evolve.

- Nick

Yes. So far I've found 1 that's working 100%. 2 others have dead Hard Drives, and one simply gives me no chime and no video. Haven't gotten to the others yet.

MacDude121 said:

Yes. So far I've found 1 that's working 100%. 2 others have dead Hard Drives, and one simply gives me no chime and no video. Haven't gotten to the others yet.

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What I'm mainly concerned about is the quality of the CRT display's (fuzzy vs. clear vs. flickering vs. shrunken image [image not filling the whole tube area]).

But hey...$25 bucks for 8 iMac G3's...still pretty cool! I see iMac G3's selling on Craig's List for $50+ all the time (too high a price)...so even if you only get 1-2 working you're doing good.

- Nick

My thoughts exactly nick. So far the CRT's seem to be in pretty good shape.

I've plugged the next G3 in, and it's done something very strange. It boots OS 9.2, but stops before it gets all the way there. All I see is a background and a blank menu bar. Upon letting it sit for about 10 minutes, a small window has popped up saying "Searching For Macintosh Manager Server" With the options of (Pick Server) (Finder) and (Shut Down)

Edit: I clicked both "Finder" and "Pick Server" and both ask me to type in a password...

MacDude121 said:

I've plugged the next G3 in, and it's done something very strange. It boots OS 9.2, but stops before it gets all the way there. All I see is a background and a blank menu bar. Upon letting it sit for about 10 minutes, a small window has popped up saying "Searching For Macintosh Manager Server" With the options of (Pick Server) (Finder) and (Shut Down)

Click to expand...

If I remember correctly...in OS 9...if you hold down the "Shift" key during the boot process (after the startup chime)...this is booting with the extensions turned off (sort of like "Safe Mode").

Maybe this will help you boot this computer so you can work with it. If so, then you can open up the "Extensions Manager"...and turn off the extensions that are causing issues (such as this "Manager Server")...then be able to boot normally.

- Nick

Darn, tried that and it did the same thing. Still hangs and asks me for an administrator password to quit to the finder.

I found a sticker on the side of one of the iMacs, said it was from a college. Something tells me that this is the "Network Administrator's" computer, and therefore locked with a password.

An OS reinstall seems to be in order.

Also, another question. One of these Macs is running OS 9.1. Is there an equivalent to "software Update" in OS X in OS 9 that would allow me to update to 9.2 and update the firmware?

MacDude121 said:

Also, another question. One of these Macs is running OS 9.1. Is there an equivalent to "software Update" in OS X in OS 9 that would allow me to update to 9.2 and update the firmware?

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Is this what you're looking for?:

Mac OS 9: Available Updates

- Nick

Yes it is. Thanks for that.

Well, as far as I can tell a lot of these machines are good hardware wise, but are wiped of their OS and just displaying the flashing "?" and finder icon. I don't have any OS 9 disks or OS X disks earlier than 10.4, which is on DVD so it's practically useless.

So here's what I did. I downloaded Ubuntu 6 and burned it to a CD using disk utility. Then I rebooted holding the C key to boot from disk, and the past 3 iMacs have done either just totally ignore the optical drive and continue booting, or booted into open firmware. I tested the disk using my PowerMac G5, and it worked fine.

What's going on here? Are all of the CD drives dead? Do I need a firmware update to install what I thought was a very old version of Ubuntu?

MacDude121 said:

I don't have any OS 9 disks or OS X disks earlier than 10.4, which is on DVD so it's practically useless.

Click to expand...

If you're going to play with "old school" Mac's...you're gonna need to get "old school" software!

Here's a pretty good resource/summary about a lot of things iMac G3 related:

Apple - Support - iMac G3 (CRT)

TidBITS : Upgrading an Old iMac to Mac OS X

With the 2nd link...scroll down till you see the paragraph that starts with "What I Needed..." in bold. Here they start talking about firmware. The first link has firmware info as well.

HTH,

- Nick

Thanks Nick. I'll see if I can find an OS 9 retail disk somewhere, and possibly a set of OS X 10.2 or 10.3 CD's.

MacDude121 said:

Thanks Nick. I'll see if I can find an OS 9 retail disk somewhere, and possibly a set of OS X 10.2 or 10.3 CD's.

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Sounds like a great plan!

Are you on e-Bay yet...or are you still buying things the old-fashioned way?

- Nick

pigoo3 said:

Sounds like a great plan!

Are you on e-Bay yet...or are you still buying things the old-fashioned way?

- Nick

Click to expand...

Haha. Not quite on Ebay yet, but I have bought stuff from amazon and other places. I guess I'm about half way there. ;D

Just put the next G3 on the "operating table" It boots to a ?/finder. But refuses to do anything besides that. Holding Option, +Option+O+F for firmware, anything. It just won't do anything expect flash that little icon at me. I took it apart, and it's one of the original Bondi Blue Rev A iMacs. Pretty dirty inside, so I gave it a quick cleaning, made sure it had no loose connections, but it won't take any input from the keyboard at all.

Any ideas? Are the USB ports dead?

MacDude121 said:

Haha. Not quite on Ebay yet, but I have bought stuff from amazon and other places. I guess I'm about half way there. ;D

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Come on man:

- you gotta get on e-Bay
- you gotta get on Craig's List
- you gotta get a credit card
- you gotta get a Paypal account
- and you gotta get off the bike & get a car (or pickup truck)

Then you'll be ready to do some serious business.

Of course then you'd be chasing women...and have no time for beat-up old G3 iMacs!!!

MacDude121 said:

Just put the next G3 on the "operating table" It boots to a ?/finder.

Click to expand...

Well I'm sure you know that this means either:

- it has no HD in it.
- the HD in it is dead.
- or there's no OS on the HD.

This is another situation where having an OS CD would come in handy...since you could try booting from the CD.

- Nick

WOW....Takes me back to when I pulled PowerMacs out of dumpsters. Have Fun!

Mac SK said:

WOW....Takes me back to when I pulled PowerMacs out of dumpsters. Have Fun!

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Oh believe me, I definitely am having a lot of fun. iMac G3's are by far my favorite Mac, so having 9 of them in the house is AWESOME.

Still on the search for some affordable OS 9 & 10.2-10.3 CD's. I'll post back when I find some.

MacDude121 said:

Upon letting it sit for about 10 minutes, a small window has popped up saying "Searching For Macintosh Manager Server" With the options of (Pick Server) (Finder) and (Shut Down)

Click to expand...

This particular Mac was apparently connected to a LAN and the LAN connection was required to finish the boot process. I did this a few times with older Macs at a company I worked for about 15 years ago now. We had some machines that were required to connect to the local server to use shared copies of Office and other software. Restarting without extensions didn't work because this was not an extension process in OS9. Your best bet will to reformat and load OS9 on it again from scratch.

MacDude121 said:

Still on the search for some affordable OS 9 & 10.2-10.3 CD's. I'll post back when I find some.

Click to expand...

What are they going for these days? I have multiple legal copies (I.E Retail discs) of OS 7.3 -7.6, OS 8 - 8.5, OS 9- 9.2 and OS 10.0 - 10.5 sitting in my drawer or in storage that I never use. Maybe I should sell them.

baggss said:

This particular Mac was apparently connected to a LAN and the LAN connection was required to finish the boot process. I did this a few times with older Macs at a company I worked for about 15 years ago now. We had some machines that were required to connect to the local server to use shared copies of Office and other software. Restarting without extensions didn't work because this was not an extension process in OS9. Your best bet will to reformat and load OS9 on it again from scratch.

Click to expand...

Ah, okay. Thanks for that, interesting how they had them set up in that way.

baggss said:

What are they going for these days? I have multiple legal copies (I.E Retail discs) of OS 7.3 -7.6, OS 8 - 8.5, OS 9- 9.2 and OS 10.0 - 10.5 sitting in my drawer or in storage that I never use. Maybe I should sell them.

Click to expand...

The newer OS disks can go anywhere from $100+ for 10.4 and 10.5. I found a retail Box set of 10.1 and OS 9.2 for $20. Will probably buy that to get these machines up and running again.