iMac g3 won't find OS

Hi,

I have an iMac g3 500 MHz running OS 10.4.11 and tried to install OS 9 Classic by setting the Startup Disk preference to boot the computer off of an archived system CD of OS 9. When I first restarted the computer to boot off the CD, the computer couldn't find any OS, and so displayed the folder with a question mark, then a few seconds later found OS 10. I then tried a few more times, with 4 different OS 9 CDs, and now it's not even finding OS 10 anymore. I did copy an OS 9 System Folder to the desktop, if that may have anything to do with it.

You might also want to look at Graphic Converter. I've used it off and on for quite some time. At one point some of the tools made more sense to me than the ones in Photoshop. There is a demo that last time I checked was fully functional.

Bool said:

I did copy an OS 9 System Folder to the desktop, if that may have anything to do with it.

Click to expand...

As far as I know, having the "System Folder" with a 9 in the folder icon, plus, having installed OS 9 drivers on the hard drive when first installing OS X, is what's needed to boot to OS 9. (if you didn't tick install OS 9 drivers when you first erased the hard drive, you can only install them by erasing and reinstalling)
Classic will run without the OS 9 drivers. Classic is akin to emulation of OS 9 from within OS X.

I would like to install OS 9, but OS 10 isn't booting. I think that the computer is still trying to boot from the OS 9 CD. I tried to force it to boot off the hard drive by holding down the D key, but that didn't work.

It may well try to boot from the OS 9 CD but as it does not have OS 9 drivers installed it cannot. Take the CD out and see if it boots to OS X.4. As gsahli pointed out, to install OS 9 you may well have to boot from the Tiger disc, erase the hard drive, do a clean install selecting the OS 9 drivers box during formatting, and then try OS 9 when Tiger is up and running.