pattifromoak park

Q: iMac G3 hard drive not being detected

My iMac G3 (Blueberry) has a broken CD drive, and there appeared to be nothing on the hard drive.(question mark finder folder) I plugged in the hard drive in my eMac (USB 2.0 1.25 Ghz.) The drive showed up as Macintosh HD and had some Mac OS 8/9 on it. I deleted the partition to protect anyone's privacy whoever threw this out. I than replaced that installation with mac os 9.1 on it. I put it back in the iMac and it still had question mark folder. is the Hard Disk broken? i dont hear any irregular noises from it. should I replace it with a 60 GB hard disk?

Mac OS 9.1.x

Posted on Mar 10, 2014 7:58 PM

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Q: iMac G3 hard drive not being detected

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  • by rccharles,

    rccharles rccharles Mar 11, 2014 1:50 PM in response to pattifromoak park
    Level 6 (8,486 points)
    Classic Mac OS
    Mar 11, 2014 1:50 PM in response to pattifromoak park

    I forget is this a tray loading or slot loading machine?

     

    Sometimes if volumes don't appear in Startup Manager (what you get when you hold down the Option key at startup), you need to reset the Mac's PRAM, NVRAM, and Open Firmware. Shut down the Mac, then power it up, and before the screen lights up, quickly hold down the Command, Option, P, and R keys, until the Mac has chimed twice more after the powerup chime.

     

    Then, before the screen lights up, hold down Command-Option-O-F until the Open Firmware screen appears. Then enter these lines, pressing Return after each one:

     

    reset-nvram

    set-defaults

    reset-all

     

    "The reset-all command should restart your Mac. If so, you have successfully reset the Open Firmware settings."

    http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1812?viewlocale=en_US

     

    Should the fail...

    Try taking the battery out for 10 minutes.  Put battery back in.  Cross fingers. Power the machine back on.

     

    How to eject a cd from the internal cd drive:

    eject cd

     

    List of devices:

    devalias

     

    List of variables:

    printenv

  • by pattifromoak park,

    pattifromoak park pattifromoak park Mar 11, 2014 3:11 PM in response to rccharles
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 11, 2014 3:11 PM in response to rccharles

    It is a slot loading. ive done reset-all command, it wouldnt hurt to try it again... set-defaults doesnt seeem to work but i will plug it in again. eject cd doesnt work because the motor in the drive wont work. im going to take the battery out.

     

    none of those commands seem to work changing anything that the mac is doing taking out battery now. The hard drive seems to make access noises when on the missing startup folder icon, but it accesses the disk once every couple of serconds doing the same access sounds. When i got it, it only booted to OF. Is it possible that the hard drive is bad? Do you think my IDE cable is broken? (waits 10 minutes) nope that didnt work. should i replace the hard drive

  • by rccharles,

    rccharles rccharles Mar 11, 2014 7:20 PM in response to pattifromoak park
    Level 6 (8,486 points)
    Classic Mac OS
    Mar 11, 2014 7:20 PM in response to pattifromoak park

    The startup manager will list all of your bootable partitions then give you a choice of which to boot.  Hold down the option key then power on. Continue holding down the option key until you see the startup manager. This brings up the startup manager. Click on your hd or disc. Click on right arrow key.

     

    Replace hd?

     

    You were able to read the hd on your emac. Could have been a corrupt filesystem that prevented booting.    If you can read it,  on the emac the hd is probably ok.  What os did you format the hd with.  Included mac os x drivers if formatting from x.

     

    Look up "mac os classic blessing hd" on google.

     

    Sometimes you can get the cd drive for a song on ebay.  I think the power & data are on the same cable to the cd drive... a little different.

  • by pattifromoak park,

    pattifromoak park pattifromoak park Mar 30, 2014 10:59 AM in response to rccharles
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 30, 2014 10:59 AM in response to rccharles

    start up manager shows up nothing. I used classic to make the 9.0.4 installation through my emac. Is classic preventing the eMac to bless the iMac's hard drive? I formatted the iMac hard drive with 10.4.11 I dont know what good intalling 9 drivers to the drive would do, since it doesnt have OS 9 on there anyway. the iMac's CD drive uses some strange proprietary connector, looks similar to an IDE connector, but with more pins, so I can't use any other CD drive. I have been experimenting with a USB flash drive and seeing if it will boot from that or not. Due to the USB 1.1 speeds, It seems to be taking forever, I have installed OS 9 on that. When booting, goes to white screen and tries to read the flash drive. The disk acess light seems to be doing something, it turns on and off every 2 seconds, but this is acess not the standby light. What i dont understand is when i took the hard drive out of the computer and put it in my eMac first when i didnt delete everything, stuff was still on it. Start up manager with usb flash drive does the same thing, but the cursor is the clock symbol. I have left the computer on for an hour and seems to be doing nothing with the flash drive. I will try the OS 9 drivers though, do you think the IDE connector is broken.

  • by pattifromoak park,

    pattifromoak park pattifromoak park Mar 30, 2014 11:06 AM in response to rccharles
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 30, 2014 11:06 AM in response to rccharles

    I have learned about the bless command in terminal, I might experiment with that

  • by pattifromoak park,

    pattifromoak park pattifromoak park Mar 30, 2014 12:00 PM in response to rccharles
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 30, 2014 12:00 PM in response to rccharles

    I blessed the system folder it recognized it! but it hangs with mouse pointer after startup manager! WhAT.

  • by rccharles,

    rccharles rccharles Mar 30, 2014 1:16 PM in response to pattifromoak park
    Level 6 (8,486 points)
    Classic Mac OS
    Mar 30, 2014 1:16 PM in response to pattifromoak park

    I blessed the system folder it recognized it! but it hangs with mouse pointer after startup manager! WhAT.

     

    Bummer.

     

    Hold down the shift key power on machine for boot.  This is safe mode.  Might help.

     

    Sure the mouse is good?  Try the other usb port.

     

     

    --------------------------------------------------------------

     

    start up manager shows up nothing. I used classic to make the 9.0.4 installation through my emac. Is classic preventing the eMac to bless the iMac's hard drive?

     

    My guess would have been that the folder would have been "blessed".  Besides the command, in classic if you drag some file,  main os file,  out of system folder then back in should result in bless.

     

    I formatted the iMac hard drive with 10.4.11 I dont know what good intalling 9 drivers to the drive would do, since it doesnt have OS 9 on there anyway.

     

    My understanding is that you need these hidden partitions to boot classic from hd.  If formated with classic they are there.

     

    the iMac's CD drive uses some strange proprietary connector, looks similar to an IDE connector, but with more pins, so I can't use any other CD drive.

    The extra pins  4 ? are the standard power pins.  There probable document somewhere.  I once read about them.

     

    I have been experimenting with a USB flash drive and seeing if it will boot from that or not. Due to the USB 1.1 speeds, It seems to be taking forever, I have installed OS 9 on that.

     

    Will read cd after booted.  I have not heard of anyone successing with boot off external usb drive with this machine.

     

    When booting, goes to white screen and tries to read the flash drive. The disk acess light seems to be doing something, it turns on and off every 2 seconds, but this is acess not the standby light. What i dont understand is when i took the hard drive out of the computer and put it in my eMac first when i didnt delete everything, stuff was still on it.

  • by rccharles,

    rccharles rccharles Mar 30, 2014 1:33 PM in response to rccharles
    Level 6 (8,486 points)
    Classic Mac OS
    Mar 30, 2014 1:33 PM in response to rccharles

    Here is some info on cable conversion for someother cdrom drive.  Didn't read carefully.  Claimed success.

    https://discussions.apple.com/thread/579350

     

    Robert

  • by pattifromoak park,

    pattifromoak park pattifromoak park Mar 30, 2014 2:53 PM in response to rccharles
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 30, 2014 2:53 PM in response to rccharles

    im gonna use open firmware to do reset-all and see if that works. i will let you know and thanks for all your suggestions

  • by pattifromoak park,

    pattifromoak park pattifromoak park Mar 30, 2014 2:57 PM in response to rccharles
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 30, 2014 2:57 PM in response to rccharles

    strange, now the iMac has no start up chime anymore. what. Start up keyboard commands no longer work.

  • by pattifromoak park,

    pattifromoak park pattifromoak park Mar 30, 2014 2:59 PM in response to rccharles
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 30, 2014 2:59 PM in response to rccharles

    I Have another drive with 9.1 on it i will see if i can bless that.

  • by pattifromoak park,

    pattifromoak park pattifromoak park Mar 30, 2014 3:37 PM in response to rccharles
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 30, 2014 3:37 PM in response to rccharles

    alright i got the chime bakc

  • by pattifromoak park,

    pattifromoak park pattifromoak park Mar 30, 2014 3:41 PM in response to rccharles
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Mar 30, 2014 3:41 PM in response to rccharles

    SORRY I KEEP REPLYING i just need to tell so much stuff. The other hard drive appeared to have an older version of Mac OS ROM on it. Instead of the folder, it is a floppy disk that has the question mark on it so i dunno what to make of that

  • by Eustace Mendis,

    Eustace Mendis Eustace Mendis Mar 30, 2014 4:41 PM in response to pattifromoak park
    Level 7 (25,402 points)
    Mar 30, 2014 4:41 PM in response to pattifromoak park

    You do not mention the PRAM battery. How old is it? If you do not know its age, it's probably time to replace it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szmBoIp-NoU

     

    Start up chime disappearing could be the sign of a bad battery.

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