I am trying to fix up a very beat up Bondi imac. Its former owner declaired it dead. The cd doesn't work and the hard drive seemed very buggy. It did start up though. I tried to get it to boot off an external usb cd drive, but no luck.
Is it possible to boot off a usb drive? I am used to scsi.
I put a good harddrive in a beige g3 and installed os9 on it, then put that drive into the imac. On start-up I got the blinking question mark.
I repeated this operation only installed osx. In the imac it did begin to start up on osx but then an error window popped up and it froze up.
Back into the beige g3 it went. This time I had a friend with an imac email me their system and I dragged it onto the hard drive. Once it was back in the imac I again got a blinking question mark.
I guess my question is, how do I install a system for a bondi imac when the imac does not have a cd drive? Can I do it with the harddrive in a beige g3?
No, at least I have never heard of anyone being able to do so with these machines.
that should work, but you may be missing a few extensions, or have the wrong ones installed (specific to the other box. Try booting with the extensions off (space bar) and see if that gets you past it.
OS X drops a bunch of stuff into the ROM for users and junk. In theory, if you had already installed X on this machine, you could do this, provided you had enabled the root user, or the same users (and passwords) on the other box. Too much of a PITA and too complicated, best to install directly onto the machine where it will reside permanantly.
I had the same problem some months back. see http://www.applefritter.com/node/view/2525 for details. While not detailed in the post, I was eventually able to get the CD to work again. I found that the cable for the CD had indeed come loose, despite my protests to the contrary. Check all connections and then retry.
--DDTM
If the iMac had not been used for a while (not plugged into AC power), the internal memory battery has died. This can cause the blinking ? mark. Check this site for battery part numbers, sources and instructions for changing. Mac PRAM, NVRAM, CUDA/PMU & Battery Tutorial
http://www.geocities.com/texas_macman/pram.html
Cheers, Tom
Mac Troubleshooting, Maintenance & Tips
http://www.geocities.com/texas_macman/MacTroubleshoot.html