I got a beige G3 back a while ago from someone. I had used it for a bit and it worked with os 9 in it,but then one day after that it didnt work. I had tried to install jaguar on it but i didn't work. The hard drive didnt show up. I didn't work on it for about a month. Then today when i tried to start it up,it didnt even start up at all .I think it might be the power supply.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Beige G3 wont boot
August 31, 2004 - 1:29pm
#1
Beige G3 wont boot
Hi homestar-
Same deal here. There are a few tricks you can do to get a mac to start. These beige boxes seem flakier than most!
Basically, what is probably going on here is that when you try to start, it is still trying to boot Jaguar - but for whatever stupid reason can't. What you need to do is get it to forget all about that Jaguar CD and boot from your hard drive again. There is a chip in every mac called "NVRAM", or Non-Volatile RAM, which remembers what you wanted it to do last time you switched the machine off.
The easiest way is usually to "Zap the PRAM", which can be dome by holding down the command-option-p-r keys at the same time when you start. Keep holding all of those keys down and the computer chimes again (same noise as when a mac starts), let it chime a few times before you release the keys. On MY beige G3, this does not work so well, so I just pull the battery off of the board.
This should effectively reset everything! Take the top off your mac. If you look down where the PCI slots are, you should see a little black plastic box with a battery in it. Take the cover off of it and pull the battery out. Now look to the far left past all of the PCI slots, there is a small pushbutton switch on the motherboard near the back. This is the CUDA switch. It resets the "CUDA" chip, which controls the keyboard, power supply, and firmware memory. Once the battery is out, press the CUDA switch with a small screwdriver or pen, and hold it down for a few seconds. After you release it, replace the battery (facing the right direction!).
Then you should be able to boot again. Once you know where all of these things are it only takes a minute. Does it boot? You should hear a chime, the the monitor and hard drive starts, and the mac screen starts. You might need to have an OS 9 boot Cd handy. If the machine starts but can't find your hard drive, then try this whole process again, but restart at the end with your system CD in the drive, and hold down the "C" key when you start. As you boot off of the CD you will probably see your hard drive on the desktop. Then go to the "Apple" menu at the top of the screen, pull down to "Control Panels", and select "Startup Disk". Click on your hard drive to restart from it. Then you can remove the CD and use your hard drive again.
Good luck! These machines are a real beast to install OS X on, but it can be done.
Check that PRAM battery, sometime that'll cause the problem you descripted.
i did what metrophage said and now i can get it to boot but only off the applecare diagnostic cd. when i try to change the startup disk it doesnt even display os9 only the cd.
My beige G3 266/desktop was running perfectly happily on OS 9.2.1, until...
Just gone from 192 MB (128 + 32 + 32) to 384 MB (3 x 128), and I can no longer start up from the internal HD mor from the 9.2.1 install CD.
If I turn extensions off I hear a lot of HD activity (much of it an obviously repeated cycle - always an ominous sign) before the progress bar appears, then shortly after it does appear I get - usually - a bus error. With extensions on it gets to the progress bar quite quickly, loads the initial Ethernet extension (the one with the two-way arrow on a grey icon), then I get a spinning beachball for a bit, followed by an empty error alert.
It also won't start up from the 9.2.1 CD, but the strange thing is, it will start from the OS 8.6 (upgrade) CD - although even then the Finder sometimes quits as soon as it starts. When the Finder doesn't quit and I've managed to run Disk First Aid it gives the internal drive a clean bill of health. It also reports the correct amount of RAM in the About window.
Even stranger is that if I return it to its old RAM configuration, all this still happens. What's up here? What could I have done to the poor thing? As far as I know I was as careful as I've always been when installing RAM, but I've never had this kind of trouble before, even with an SE/30, which was much harder to deal with!
I could go back and reinstall OS 8.5 and upgrade it to 8.6 - but I assume that won't make it start from the OS 9.2.1 CD, in which case I'll still be unable to reinstall that. Naturally, I'd prefer not to.
And yes, I did try zapping the PRAM - several times, and following Metrophage's instructions I've now done a CUDA reset, also to no avail. Similarly 'init-nvram' in open firmware made no difference.
Any other ideas, anyone?