G3 - switching out logicboard & hard drive

Hi all.

I'm pretty new at this, so any help is probably great help.

I'm getting ready to replace the logicboard in an imac g3 slot loading but no firewire. 350 mhz i think.

i bought one from ebay (of course) to get firewire capabilities.

i've read somewhere that sometimes the newer hard drives take too much power from these old computers and they have a hard time booting with all the new stuff. how will i know if i'm ok? i'm also going to upgrade the hard drive too.

i also need some link to a walkthrough of sorts. as in, step by step, even what do i do once i close the thing back up and need to load the software. just stick the disks in and let it go? thanks for humoring me.

GB

Hey-
Did you get the CD I sent you yet?
I would recommend putting in the logic board, HD, and RAM all in at once. Do a PRAM reset (Option, Apple, P, R) on startup and let it reset. Shove in the OS9 cd and load it to the HD. Upgrade the firmware and install OS X 10.4.9.
If you have trouble, back track and use the logic board with the old HD and RAM so you can troubleshoot the faulty parts.
Good luck.
Bryan

Hey Bryan,
yep, i got the cd today. Thanks much! i'll admit, i'm a bit confused with the software...
let me start from the beginning, though. i initially tried my new ram (which also arrived today) in the old setup, as i knew the HD, board, etc all work. it does the funky "i'm not going to work" beep and won't load. fabulous. third try on RAM and i really thought I had it right this time. I got the non-ecc (or eec?) PC100.. then i decided to try the new logicboard out. i removed old board and hd, put both the ebay-harvested board and hd in the machine, and nothing. a small green light lit up on the board, but absolutely nothing else happened when i tried to power it up. so, i went back to the old board, old RAM to setup the new HD.
so, i stuck the new CD in... now how do I load that onto the new HD? Sorry to be a bit dull with such a simple task, but i'll blame it on a glass of wine.

and the only copy of os 10.4 i have is on dvd... i had hoped to get the new logicboard up which had firewire, copy the dvd of os 10.4 onto my LaCie and then somehow load the 10.4 onto the imac via firewire. this obviously won't work. other ideas? i have 10.2 on cd. yuck.

your help is invaluable! Thank you!
GB

one more question- my ebay motherboard was guaranteed not DOA. the packaging on the thing was a joke. the guy just stuck it in a box with a bit of newspaper, and of course Brown tore the box apart.

when i put the board in the imac, the little green light did light up, but *NOTHING* else happened.

does this mean the board is broken or am I doing something wrong? I want to get my money back if the board is bad, but i also want to make sure that is really the problem.