Clamshell iBooks won't boot from cd?

Hello!

I picked up two indigo clamshell iBooks running os9 a few days ago. They used to belong to a school and the only accessible account is heavily locked down (I can't even access system preferences or change the wallpaper!)

No worry, I thought, since I'll just put a fresh install of os9 on, however, it seems they just won't boot from a cd!

I've tried two different universal os9 installation discs to no avail, the machines read them and pick them up (they both appear on the desktops just fine and show as an os9 install disc) however when I attempt to boot from the disc, they read them slowly, then just go to the happy mac icon and boot up as normal.

What I was wondering is was it possible for the school to prevent the machines booting from a disc?

Any help would be appreciated

Thanks!

Steve

We're probably going to need one of our members who are familiar with older Macs to help you with this one. I suspect though that the school has put in a restriction to keep the machines from booting off a CD. That would prevent students from making unauthorized changes. I know nothing at all about OS9 or I would try to help. One thing that you might check... Mac OS disks are machine specific. Just because you have an OS9 install disk does not necessarily mean that it's compatible or an original that came with the machine.

One of our members should reply though, so hang on.

Yes…I read the OP post earlier…and was thinking about it.

Even though we're talking about two old iBooks with the same problem. Both of these VERY OLD iBooks may very well have been sitting in a closet collecting dust for the same reason. They both had problems. And in this case…that same problem could be bad optical drives.

Both of these computers should be able to boot from a genuine bootable OS 9 CD. Assuming that nothing is wrong with the OS disk being used (or multiple if more than one disk has been tried). If both of computers are experiencing the same problem…I wouldn't eliminate the possibility that both have the same problem.

One way to verify this would be…using a known good external optical drive to see if this makes a difference.

- Nick

And the precise model details will have to be known. Some will run up to OS 9.1 only, and later models, which the purple clamshell maybe because of the colour, will run OS 9.2.2 only, or early OS X.

Have a read of this from Apple and see if it helps:-


https://support.apple.com/en-au/HT2191