GaryK

Markus...help!

OK I have a few imac g3's and Ive been putting OS X 10.3 on no problems. However a couple of them have no OS installed so when you turn them on you just get a flashing '?' and picture of an old mac in the middle of the screen. Now if I put in OS X disc 1 and hold down 'C' when starting up that should boot from the CD and install panther. Now this has worked on some but doesnt seem to work on others. Do I need to put System 9 on first? Also I have System 9.2.1 as a dmg file on my powerbook how do I burn that onto a CD and make it bootable?

Any help most appreciated!

Cheers

Gary

RichB

Do the CD drives definately work?

Can you start up using an OS9 CD?
If you can, try going to the Startup Disk control panel and making sure the CD is selected, then restart, eject the OS9 CD and stick it the Panther CD.

Holding down C should/does work on the G3s.

Putting 9 on might be a good idea and simple enough to do.
In theory as long as the files Finder and System are in the same folder that folder will be 'blessed'. Vice versa, to make an OS9 folder inactive you simply create 2 new folders, move the finder to one and the system to the other.
Before you burn it, make the sure System Folder has a little Mac logo in it (means its blessed).

Is the Panther CD a *cough* proper one?
I know someone who has had problems with 'backup' Panther CDs that wouldn't work in old G3s, laptops specifically... Using the original disk worked fine.

Markus

Hello Gary,
Do the iMac's have built in USB? If not then Panther won't install by default as it requires built in USB (Jaguar did not require this).

one other thing to try is this. turn on the machine and hold down the option (alt) key and keep it held down, you may well see a boot selector screen. At this point, chuck in the panther CD and click the icon of the curled arrow (rescan) and it will scan for the CD, if it shows up, then you should be able to select it and then boot from it. At which point the installer will tell you if it can install.

The other thing is this dialog might allow you to select an OS that is already on the machine to boot from, though it sounds as though the drives are totally wiped.

If the CD is working on some machines and not others, it could be, as Rich said, the drives in the machines themselves. Try cleaning the drives with a standard CD cleaner and see if that helps any.

GaryK

Hi Markus,
Yes they all have USB thats what I cant understand, some are fine and some arent yes might give the old CD drive clean a try, the discs are spinning up just not getting anywhere.

Thanks Rich for your comments too!

Gary