[X4U] G3 in endless loop of inaction

[Ronald Steinke]

On 28 Jun, 2007, at 2:16 PM, Jonnythan wrote:

> My friend has a really old blue G3 running OS X (don't know what  
> flavour)
> and Classic. She decided to restart in OS9, and chose the Classic  
> folder to
> start up from with the StartUp Disk preference pane.
>
> The result was the flashing question mark on startup.
>
> When holding the the alt-key on startup you don't get the option to  
> choose a
> startup folder.
>
> The G3 refuses to start from a CD when holding down the c-key on  
> startup,
> and won't mount as an external firewire disk when firewire- 
> connected to an
> iMac and started up with the t-key held down.
>
> So the question is can anyone think of a way out of this scenario  
> to get the
> G3 to start up in OS X again?

The flashing question mark indicates that no system folder for OS-9  
was found on the drive. Is your friend positive that there was indeed  
a valid OS-9 system installed in the first place?

If holding the Option button down during startup doesn't give any  
choice of active system folders, your friend may have corrupted the  
OS-X system so that it is not available to start from any more. Not  
showing an active system folder for OS-9 indicates to me that there  
is no valid OS-9 on the drive.

What CD is being used as the startup CD? If it does not have a valid  
OS on it, the machine won't use it to boot from. Another reason for  
not starting from a CD could be that the CD is not an original  
installation CD and is not being recognized by the CD player. Some CD  
readers will not allow a copied installation CD to mount for startup.  
This is especially noticeable with older G3 machines in my  
experience. The last reason for not starting from a CD is that the CD  
reader is not a Mac bootable model, meaning that the Mac will let it  
read CDs, but not let it start up from a CD. This can occur when a  
replacement CD reader is installed.

The Firewire issue is something else. As far as I know, the machine  
being started in Target mode has to have the cable connected to both  
machines before starting it up and the viewing machine has to be  
running at the time that the Target machine is turned on. Then, you  
have to wait for a few seconds to a minute before the Target machine  
drive will show up on the viewing machine's monitor. Does the monitor  
not show the Firewire symbol when the machine is booted, or just not  
boot at all?

In all cases, my first inclination would be to try booting to an  
original installation CD for OS-X (whatever version you have  
available as long as it is not a copied CD) and use Disk FirstAid to  
examine and maybe repair the disk.

A thought just jumped in, what version of OS are you trying to boot  
to? If your OS disk is a DVD (OS-10.4?) and you have a CD reader in  
the machine, it isn't going to show up to boot from! The machine just  
can't do it that way.