I have a Power Macintosh G3 1997

Question

I have a Power Macintosh G3 1997

I recently bought a Power Macintosh G3 tower off eBay (the 1997 one in beige), and everything appears to be working but the CD and Zip drive. I checked the Extensions folder and both the Apple CD/DVD Driver and the Iomega Driver for the Zip drive have been installed, and yet whenever I put a CD or Zip disk into the computer, I can here the CD spinning up or the Zip disk, but there is no response from the operating system. And when I try to open the Apple Audio Player, I get an error message telling me the Apple CD/DVD Driver hasn't loaded in start up, and that I should check it was properly installed...

There are a lot of exotic driver's in the extensions folder and I have a feeling a lot of them aren't loading as the boot up process is very quick...

I've spent time messing around with the Extension Manager, enabling and disabling various drivers (including the CD driver) and I have got no improvement. The OS seems adamant to ignore it.

Also, every time the computer is turned on, just before the boot-up and loading screen appears, I get a grey screen and a repeating text stating "can't open" over and over until the screen goes away and Mac OS 9.2.1 starts booting.

Is any of this related?

Could the faulty Extensions be the cause of a bug in the operating system?

Should I get a copy of system 9 and reinstall?

Please help! This computer is completely useless to me without a working CD-ROM drive!

Power Macintosh G3 (1997)-OTHER, Mac OS 9.2.x

Posted on May 31, 2015 5:53 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Jeff

Level 6

12,058 points

May 31, 2015 10:57 PM in response to applefanAidyn

It sounds like an OS 9.2.1 software build from another model Mac was copied to the hard drive. There may have been a third-party CD burning software extension that disabled the Apple CD/DVD extension. A reload of OS 9 with a universal/retail OS installer disk would solve your problems without the trial and error process of disabling conflicting extensions, but you may be able to get it working by simply disabling or deleting unnecessary extensions. Is the optical drive connected to the same ribbon cable as the hard drive? The original 1997 beige G3s shipped with the first revision ROM that didn't support Master/Slave configuration of dual drives on the same ATA/IDE channel. That's why each must be configured as Master and connected to a separate ribbon cable to the motherboard. The optional internal Zip drive was a SCSI model. In February 1998, the second revision ROM shipped with the beige G3s, which corrected the original programming oversight found in the code on the first revision cards. The ROM card is in a slot and can be removed/replaced with either the Revision 2 or Revision 3 ROM. The newer versions are also referred to as Revision "B" and "C" ROMs. If you run the Apple System Profiler, you can determine the ROM version installed in your G3, as described in "Power Macintosh G3: Identifying The Logic Board Revision." A 1997 model with its original ROM card will have version $77D.40F2. Because the beige G3s used ATAPI optical drives (instead of SCSI), replacing an original one with a newer/faster drive (CD-ROM, CD-RW, DVD-ROM, etc.) is much easier, but some third-party drives without a Mac ROM won't respond to the keyboard shortcut to boot the computer from the optical drive. If the optical drive must be replaced, you'll likely need to move the jumper on the rear to the "Master" position from the factory-installed "CS" (Cable Select) position, as indicated on the label attached to the drive. I installed a Toshiba CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive in one of my beige G3s and it booted without issues from it.

Reply

Answer 2

Jun 13, 2015 7:32 PM in response to Jeff

Thanks so much for the reply!

I am in the process of getting my hands on a copy of Mac OS 9, but I'm still curious about what you were saying in regards to the CD-ROM Drive its self, from what I can see inside the computer, the CD Drive dose not share a ribbon with the hard drive, but everything is crammed in pretty tight so it is hard to tell without forcefully pulling the ribbons apart, which I am wary of with such an old machine.

From what I could fine out in the Apple System Profiler the CD Drive's Vendor is MATSHITA, it's revision number: 2S20, and its product ID: CD-ROM CR-585. Not sure if that means anything to you, but it goes over my head.

I also tried putting in a Mac OS 10.1 Installer disk, to see if the computer would respond to the boot disk. Holding down "C" with a disk in the drive seemed to force the the computer into realizing the existence of a CD-ROM drive, but until very recently still would not boot from the Installer disk. Instead, it would skip over the error screen, boot up, and then recognize any CD-ROM. According to the toolbar, it was using some ATAPI, or something like that, extension to run the CD's.

But if the computer is booted up without a CD inserted and the "C" key held down, the computer reverts to the error screen and once again does not acknowledge the CDs or the Driver.

Even with this weird loop-hole, the computer is still acting oddly, refusing to open a program that it had opened before claiming that (and I'm paraphrasing here) 'this program requires 290K of memory to run, you only have 456166k of memory' I mean the error message contradicts itself!

There is something very wrong here, and I hope that a fresh install will clear everything up.

Reply

Answer 3

Jeff

Level 6

12,058 points

Jun 13, 2015 8:46 PM in response to applefanAidyn

Unless a 1997 beige G3's ROM card has been replaced with a Revision B or Revision C ROM card, the hard drive will be connected to one ribbon cable and the optical drive to the other, plugging into the motherboard next to each other. In beige G3s with a Revision B or C ROM that had a Zip drive, it typically shared the same ribbon cable as the optical drive (which is an ATAPI device). If you were able to successfully boot the computer and run the Apple System Profiler, you'd see the devices and volumes listed.

You would be better off wiping the drive clean and choosing the longer reformatting option of "writing zeros" to the hard drive. Format it as a Mac OS Extended (HFS+) volume. If you want to run OS 9.x, use a retail/universal installer OS 9 disk (white disk with a yellow-orange "9" on it). If you'd prefer to run OS X, be sure to have adequate installed memory. Mac OS 10.2.x (Jaguar) is the highest officially-supported version of OS X for a beige G3. Using the third-party utility "XPostFacto," you could install Mac OS 10.3.x (Panther).

Reply