Q: I restored Mac OS 8.6 on iMac G3 Bondi blue and it freezes everytime on startup what fixes can help?

What happens when you hold SHIFT while booting? That disables extensions and, if the computer becomes stable, indicates your mucking with the extensions is the issue.

The G3 iMacs were the first Macs with "New World ROM" that makes the PRAM battery less of an issue that it was on earlier Macs. Still, they cost about US$5 online and are relatively easy to replace, so it worth a try.

If a dead PRAM battery corrupted something, the way to fix that is to zap the PRAM during a cold start by holding the key combo command option p r and keep holding until you hear a total of three startup chimes, then let go the keys. That flushes corrupted values and replaces them with factory defaults.

When you tried OS9, did you use retail install disks or the grey system disks from another Mac model? The latter doesn;t alwasy work.

The first thing you need to do is get a full retail install cd.

Or you can try to install Linux on the box.

Robert

You have a retail version of Panther.  It froze up during the installation.

I'm not sure of cause.  I assume it is hardware related.  Try a new keyboard & mouse.  Try booting without keybard & mouse.

How much memory to you have? OS X was finickic about the memory. Lots of bad memory found.

See if you can get the machine to run awhile from the cd.

Run disk utility on the hd.  See if machine runs.

Run terminal commands from cd.

The idea is to sort out what  works hardware wise.

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>verify & repair your startup drive

To verify & repair you file system on the startup drive, you will need to run disk utility from you installation DVD.

This article  will tell you how to get to disk utility.  Once in a disk utility, you can go and attempt to recover the disk.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1417

To repair your startup drive, you will need to run disk utility from your startup DVD.
Mac OS X 10.4: About the utilities available on the Mac OS X 10.4 Install DVD

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2055

How to run disk utility from your startup DVD.

1. Insert your  startup DVD  into your reader.  Power down your machine.  Hold down to the c key.  Power on your machine.  This will bootup your startup DVD.
2. This will bring you to a panel asking you for your language.  Pick your language.



 

3. You you come to the Install Mac OS panel.  Do not install.
4. Click on Utilities menu item.  This will give you a pulldown list of utilities.
5. Click on the disk utility.
   
6. You are now in disk utility.  Pick your disk.  Click on repair it should be on the lower right of the panel.
7. Once the repair completes successfully, you should update your permissions.

Glad to hear of your success. 

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Robert

One slot uses the smaller laptop memory.  I'm not a memory expert from the view of spec. I have bought all my memory from owc.  X is particular about memory.

I understand that we are talking about the original iMac g3 233.  People have reported some of these machines can hold 512meg while other people report the maximum is 384meg. The official max from Apple is 256meg. You will have to try.

See memory spec here.  Doesn't say how many slots the machine takes.  Give them a call.

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/apple/memory/iMac/G3_233MHz_266MHz_333MHz

My understanding is that rev b,c, and d take 512meg.

You can use the small form factor in both slots.  I read this numerous times and some suppliers sell only the small form factor.  Note: Mac OS X is rather particular to memory cards.  If there is a problem it isn't because of the small form factor. it is X.

At one time the smaller form factor cards cost more then the larger.  Apple was clever indeed.

Robert