Mac Got me Confused!!

Here's what happened. I powered down my PowerMac G3 (yes it's old But, it still does the JOB ) to switch my secondary drive from a 40G to an 80g. Once I reboot my machine it started but then the video output sotpped sending a signal. To calrify, I can see the wonderful apple Icon and that circle that continues going around .. Then after a min or sono, teh monitor just goes off and never returns. I cannot see a thing.

I am confused. I need some kind of direction on how to get my Mac working. I am going thru withdrawls. I need my Mac... Help!

what model was the new hd? did you set it as a slave?

I took out the pins entirely. The model is a Meaxtor 80g (98196h8) that my friend gave to me. I forgot to mentioned earlier that I had formated the disk on a PC thinking that once I attach it to the Mac it would ask to initialize it for Mac.

By the way! I'm a New Member. Thanks for helping.

I went on Maxtor.com and saw that I do have it set to slave ...

lol, I thought so.

I guess I won't have my Mac running

why not?

from what you've stated, swapping the secondary drive should have nothing to do with the OS starting unless some important files were stored there.

it is is set to slave that should be the proper setting for a second drive if it is on the same IDE cable as the main HD. if it is on it's own cable, then switch it to 'master'.

i also have a Maxtor as a secondary HD in my Powermac G4, and it was originally a PC HD that i reformatted to apples system.

the system shutting down sounds like it might be another problem other than the new HD. have you tried disconnecting the new HD and restarting the system?

I have restarted the machine two ways. [1] I plugged the original secondary drive & [2] I restarted without any secondary drive. Both restarts came up with the same issue. My secondary drive did not have any files other than back up documents. So I doubt that there are important systems files there ... I will try again once I get home tonight after the work/gym. I would agree it could be the new secondary drive. I guess in time I will know.

Update:
Ok when I got home I decided to fuss with it again. Somehow I got it to work. Or It works differently now. The zoning out at start up still happens but what I did was held the power button so it would go to sleep, then I woke up the machine and wala. I can see again. Unfortunately I think this will be the case over and over... I reconnected the 80g drive but it did not allow me to format it? Why is this?

did we try zapping the PRAM?

I don't know how to zap it. What are the keys and procedure?

1.Locate the following keys on your keyboard: COMMAND, OPTION, 'P', and 'R'. You will need to hold these keys down simultaneously in step 2.

2. Restart your Macintosh and hold the COMMAND-OPTION-'P'-'R' key combination. You must be pressing this key combination before you get to the 'Welcome to Macintosh' screen.

3. You will hear the startup chime. Continue holding the keys down until you have heard three chimes.

4. Your computer's PRAM will be reset to the default values

taken from: http://ict.cas.psu.edu/training/howto/macsystem/zappram.html

hope it helps.

Cool thanks, I'll try it once I get home from work today! I hope it works too.

Thanks, Zapping the RAM seems to have worked :black:

yay glad i could help