AARGH!! iMac Won't Boot!

press the CUDA Switch on the board. It should be right around the Ram slots. It could be that either the PRAM is corrupt, or the PowerManager (i doubt)

that didnt work. but i think it could be that they installed osx without upgrading the f/w. i checked the boot rom and its 4.1.1, and it needs to be 4.1.9 and i need to boot it through os9 to upgrade the firmware, but i cant install it on the hard drive because it wont let me boot from a cd and it doesnt have os9 on the hdd.

is there anyway to use my os9 cd and my pc and load the basic files needed to start the mac in os9? as i dont have another mac desktop, just laptops, so this is the only way for me. tell me honestly, is my mac screwed?

you will most likely need another mac, as your pc doesn't copy the resource forks with the item. So in that event, the machine won't boot. Does the machine have firewire? or is this the colored series slot-load?

its a 350 indigo, and it doesnt have firewire. well im beggered now, because i dont have any way of booting into os9. is there anything else it could be. I noticed when i was taking it apart, that it has no emi shield, could that be causing these symptoms. Oh great, now the screen isn't coming on all the time. Joy!

if the firmware was no updated and you don't have another mac, you just might be SOL. Sorry. Maybe you can send the drive another fritter member, have them install OS 9 and send it back.

SOL?? I might just do that. Anyone in the uk willing to help out? would reeeeeealy appreciate it!

Thanks!

shall be contacting you soon...

If you want, i can prepare a hd containing OS9 and the firmware update and send it to you, then you can sort out your mac with the firmware and then send it back to me when you no longer need it, i think i have an old 4GB drive which works, hwoever i won't be able to help until tuesday evening at the earliest (that's when i'd install it and send it off) as i have an extremely busy weekend and work experiance in the day every day next week and the week after

PM me, we can sort summit out

ok, i bought a 600mhz logic board off ebay and fitted it. it all boots fine. the imac has a blank hdd in it. When i boot it up, the imac refuses to boot from a cd. but one cd does, which is really strange. here is what i have tried:

OS 9.0.3 DV iMac CD - Original - Doesnt boot (why?!?!)
OS 9.1.1 Retail CD - Copy - Doesnt boot
OSX Tiger CD Version - Copy - Doesnt Boot
iBook hardware test cd! - original - boots!! (why only this one!!! i dont understand)

I have tried all the different resets and i have tried another cd drive from my laptop, and it just does the same thing. i am really stuck, ive been trying for hours with no luck!

help!!

IIRC 9.03 won't boot a 600MHz iMac. Also, the original optical drive may not play nicely with CD-R media, though you seem to have tested against that with the second drive. Or not. The laptop drive may not be bootable as-is, if it's not set as Slave (optical is unit 1, HD is unit 0) on the single ATA bus.

If you have an external FW CD or DVD writer, you can use that from which to boot. Fire everything up with the install disk in the FW drive and hold the option key to get the boot-volumes-choice screen.

Alternatively, you might just pull the HD and put it inside another Mac to do the install.

dan k

ok, i dont have an external firewire drive. But if i put in the laptop drive and unplugged the hdd, surely it wouldnt matter if it was slave or master. Ive tried this but still no luck. I think i need to invest in a firewire drive anyway as it only has a cd drive at the moment! any other suggestions?

do you have an external usb drive? if you do, hook up a cd drive to it, and install from there. Thats how i put OS 9.2.2 on my pismo when the DVD drive died.

nope, dont have one of those either. haha. the only thing i have is an external hard drive if that would help!

Since your iMac is now a 600 mhz, it now has firewire, so you should be able to put it into fw target disk mode. Since, according to your .sig, you've got a pismo, you should be able to do the install from there. (assuming that all is well on the pismo)

external HD will work, as long as it isn't SATA inside the case. Just rip the external enclosure apart, and hook up a desktops' CD-ROM drive or DVD drive and connect it to the iMac. try booting with that. Oh yeah and you have to hold the Option key too.

or what you could do would be to plug it into another mac, run the installer, and then plug it into the iMac, holding down the option jey on startup.

i will try that tomorrow and post the results! thanks for all your help!

edit: deleted comment as i was told it was illegal! whoops!

Thanks God i had no any problems with this model. Or i just wouldn't deal with them.

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[Disregard this - I'd written a response assuming your laptop was a Mac - but your laptop is a windows machine from what I gather]