imac g5 white screen with bootable os installed on drive

Ok so i have a imac g5 with a 1.8 ghz processor that works fine. But i bought a 2.1 iMac with isight that needed a drive. So i pulled the drive from the 1.8 and put it in the 2.1 which without the drive had the blinking folder. But now with the drive its only white screening. Ive done all the resets checked all my connections (multiple times) and yet still white screen. So question is do i need to wipe the drive and start over or from these symptoms does anyone have experience. My thought would be if it would boot the 1.8 that it would boot the 2.1.

Also can get it to boot from a ibook i have but the fans run constantly. I am missing the mount for the hd with the connection on the side any ideas if this could be white screen problem thought it only measured tempature? Kinda at a loss right now

Anybody got anything? Replaced data cable drive is spinning. all my other computers recognize drive but this iMac will not see it and when it is hooked sometimes flashing folder sometimes white screen tried to run os install iMac couldn't find the drive ANY SUGGESTIONS would be great. It had a os on it i wiped it partioned it and formatted with apple partition map still can't see it when i put in leopard disk

An iMac 2.1 is a 1999 400Mhz model G3 ~ sure you mean that?

If it is a later model that the G5 may not be able to boot from an older operating system. Helps if you provide the OS.

when i say 2.1 i mean processor its the late 2005 iMac 20 inch

guess even the community is stumped i sure am

I doubt that you can use a drive pulled from one modern (last 8-10 yrs) Mac to another and get it to boot. OS X uses kernel extensions (.kext) as motherboard-specific drivers, with different versions of .kexts for each motherboard.

i reformatted the drive to no avail. Pulled logic board and found a few bulging capacitors gonna change them out and last resort is the sata controller

jelder09 said:

i reformatted the drive to no avail. Pulled logic board and found a few bulging capacitors gonna change them out and last resort is the sata controller

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Awesome...I love to hear folks doing their own DIY work like this!!!

Good Luck,

- Nick