New to Mac....boot problem

Try zapping (resetting) the PRAM with no disc in the CD drive:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=2238

http://www.geocities.com/texas_macman/pram.html

And for the record, the next time you want to boot from a CD, just reboot and hold down the 'c' key at the powerup chime. There's no need to change the Startup Disk in the Control Panel unless you want to make it the default boot device. It's kinda like trying to enter your house through the back door by going inside the front door, unlocking the back door, then going back outside the front door and around and into the back door; it's much easier just to use the backdoor key right at the back door when you need it, right? I'm not sure why guides insist on telling people to set Macs to boot a CD from the Startup Disk CP instead of giving them the much more useful tip of using the 'c' key at boot.

Thanks for replies. I've followed instructions to reset pram and I've done that through startup key combos as well as open firmware......no diff. I'll tell you what I'm getting on boot options when I start holding options key. An icon of a hard drive with a little x in the bottom right corner of icon, label is Utilities CD. I think this is actually a directory on the hard disk that it is looking to boot from. Forgive my stupidity, I'm pretty good with windows linux etc.......but know absolutely nothing about mac.

What surpises me is how easy it was to screw this system.....pick something off a menu and thats it......render computer unstartable, unusable......at least without a cd to boot from it seems it is anyway.

Perhaps someone knows of some freeware bootable utility disk that I can download and burn to cd on my pc and use to startup from and reset the startup disk back to the root of harddrive with?

Anyway....better hurry......I'll be dead as soon as a little girl finds out her clamshell wont start. Hey....I'll just lie and say......gee...wonder whats wrong with it lol

Hope to hear from one of you mac wizards before its too late

Stu

In that case, boot to the Option menu (the Startup Manager in Apple-speak), select the hard drive icon and then click the right pointing arrow. It should boot. If not do it again and try the CD.

EDIT: Apple link to Startup Manager page

Yes I tried the option key. The only icon I get is a hard drive icon.....under it it says "UtilitiesCD" Its a pic of a harddrive......but says UtilitiesCD. I think when I selected the UtilitiesCD from the startup menu I didn't read it properly.......I think I have actually set it to boot from a directory on the harddrive that it cant boot from....maybe it could have once....but not now. Clicking the arrow in the right or the curled over one on the left makes the icon vanish for a few secs then reappear. What I suspect has happened is that somehow I've changed "where" on the harddrive it looks for bootable files......instead of where it normally boots from. Of course if I had a bootable cd that would get me up to the desktop I could just change the setting back.....but since I have no other bootable media......what to do.

I did read a post is some forum where a guy intalled some other operating system and found that his machine booted that up by default instead of having any options...which is what he wanted....someone told him to go into open firmware and type something like...."boot hd:1, filename" to get his mac os to boot.

If anyone could tell me what command to type into open firmware to direct it to boot from the correct place/filename....that would do it wouldn't it?

Thanks heaps for trying to help

Stu

I should have mentioned that you should try zapping the PRAM three or four times in a row. To tell the truth, I've never owned a Mac laptop, so I don't know if there's any differences between laptops and towers on this issue, but I wouldn't think there would be. Your clamshell comes from the same generation, and has much the same hardware, as the B&W G3 tower which I've had an exhaustive ten years of experience with. Zapping the PRAM once (through one chime) doesn't clear the PRAM. You want to clear it entirely, which requires three or fours zaps in a row with a B&W. Keep your fingers on option-command-P-R until it goes through four chimes, then release and see what happens. That should get you back to ground zero and the machine will go looking for a system with first priority being whatever is master on the ATA line. It may take a couple minutes to find the system. If it doesn't find a system, then either you've got a scrambled directory, or a bad hard drive. If that's the case, then you'll need a utility disk, or an OS 9 installation disk, or a firewire hard drive with a Mac system on it to boot from. The iMacs of that same generation HAVE to have a firmware update before even attempting to boot from an OSX disk or system. I don't know if that applies to the clamshells as well. Without the firmware update, OS X can kill a CRT iMac.

It's very curious that the options shows a "Utility CD." Did I miss something, or are you sure there's nothing in the CD drive? If there's no disc present, then I wonder where this Utility CD is. There's got to be something that the option command is finding. A permanent software disc image somehow? Or a partition. It is possible to create a kindof invisible partition. I've done that accidentally before, and it pops up eventually on the desktop, at which point you can name it, but...hmmm.

So how old is your daughter?

hey there, just want to leave my bit here

this machine has something like a bios, it's called "open firmware". you can reset some of the open firmware settings by pressing "alt + option + o + f" just like doing a pram reset, only with the o and the f keys. keep pressing them until u see black chars on a white surface, it will tell you to depress the keys then. enter the following commands and hit return after every one (without the ""):

"reset-nvram"
"set-defaults"
"reset-all"

maybe this one helps ya out? cheers, chris.

P.S.: keep watching for an "ok" message after you entered the commands...

Hi and thanks for the tips. I think I already tried the multiple pram zaps. I'm sure the hardrive is fine, it was working fine and quiet as a mouse. When I come to think of it now....there was a directy icon on the desktop named UtilityCD......I assume it had files from the real UtilityCd.....when I put the unbootable Cd in the drive and hold down the c key while booting.....the cd drive whirls and you here the head seeking like crazy....eventually giving up....then displaying the alternate face and question mark......when I try and just boot normally....there is no cd noise at all....even if there is a cd in the drive.....so it is obviously trying to boot from a directory on the hard drive. Holding down option key brings up only one option...an icon of a harddisk....labelled "UtilityCD" So I'm quite sure its trying to boot from a bogus directory on the hardrive.....or partition.....not the right one though. Dont know how the hell that could even be a choosable option for the startup disk from the menu though.

My daughter just turned 12yo.

When I get this thing going I'm going to have to tell her.......dont touch those menus.....dont dont anything......you will set in to motion an irriversible process of your computer trying to boot from some guys old harddisk in Germany or something.

I'll go back and zap the pram 10 times.....just to be sure.

Regards

Stu

Wow, I figured I was all alone here at this time of night. You guys must be up late, or up early, or in Australia or someplace like that.

You shouldn't be too afraid of Macs and of hitting the button to hell by mistake. This is a very odd situation you're in, not the norm at all.

Doing the Open Firmware is probably a better idea than zapping ten times.

it's 12:00 at noon here where i live
at the moment im at work at an apple service provider repair site... man, i can tell you, i'm so glad to come home and take a seat in front of my WINDOZE pc after fixing macs the whole day ... *rofl*

It's midnight here, so you're on the exact opposite side of the globe from me, putting you...eastern Mediterranean, Russia, Middle east, Africa...? Or maybe you're exercising your sense of humor.

If you've got a 512 stick coming, then you might want to invest in an OS X installation disc as well. The best system for that clamshell is OS 10.3 (Panther). OS 9 sucks on the internet, if she's going to be online, so upgrading to Panther would be a very wise move. Then you'd have a disc to boot from.

Well I just finished my marathon pram zapping routine...no diff. When I got back I seen your suggestion Chris....I had reset via open firmware also, but I hadn't used the set-defaults, so I tried that....was excited.......but it didn't work lol

Suppose I'm going to have to try and buy a bootable ox9.2 cd now, or some utility that will allow me to boot and edit the startup disk or something. I was trying to find a cd image I could download and boot from......aint much around.....maybe I'm just looking in wrong places. I trid downloading the ppc version of the latest ubuntu live cd that just came out few days ago....I thought yeah.....I'll be able to boot from that....no good either....apparently when you burn a mac cd on a pc it doesn't come out quite right.....at least not for a bootable. Anyone want to sell me a bootable copy of os9 and mail it to me......paypal, mastercard, etc.

Regards

Stu

See my addition to my last post about getting Panther instead. The three of us are typing at the same time here.

There are some here who claim they got free system discs from Apple for old machines.

So where do you live?

Anyway, like I say, it's the odd hours for this site, and tomorrow one of the regulars might have the miracle solution for you. There's a lot of very wise Mac enthusiasts who hang out here.

im from austria... yeah, thats quite opposite to australia and no, we dont have cangaroos here!!!

I'm in Geelong, Victoria, Australia. Yeah I wouldn't mind Pantbher....why not make it Tiger.....but since the firmware isn't upgraded in this clamshell....I'll have to install that......and I understand it will only do the update from 0s9.x so I'll still need to get an os9.x cd.

Its just on 8.30pm here

Stu

Funny you should mention Kangaroos. I went to a place called Lock Sport couple of weeks ago.....friends holiday house...and they literally have Kangaroos hopping around their frontyard on the edge of town.....throwing bits of food to them from the front verandah.......walking down the street they are hopping along the edge of the road sometimes hoping you feed them something...unbelievable...for an Aussie it is anyway lol

Stu

A quick skim of this page:

http://www.lowendmac.com/pb2/firewire-ibook-g3-366-mhz.html

and I don't see anything about a firmware update, so the firmware update thing for X may not apply to the clamshells.

You could go to Tiger. Leopard requires at least an 867mhz G4, so they're saying. In my experience on that generation of Mac, the gains in Tiger aren't worth the memory consumption and top-heavy processing, and Panther does a nice clip for most everything you and your daughter will need to do. Tiger is more calibrated for a G4 system.

I'm impressed that there are enough Macs in Austria to keep a repair guy going all day.

I really am in Hawaii, btw. Plan to catch the waves on the South Shore tomorrow. There's a swell that was kicked up our way from somewhere down around your down under world.

Yeah I heard Tiger is slow on clamshells, but this is the 366mhz version with firewire and I'll 576meg ram in it in a few days. I've read a few people are running Tiger on that config and its ok. Besides....I cant leave shit alone....I read an instruction guide on overclocking and people are pulling 433mhz out of 300mhz clamshells.....stable apparently.....and overclocking the bus as well....the 366mhz can apparently handle 489 or something like that......and the 466 can get over 600.......with 100meg bus speeds. Like this acer 3680 I'm typing on now....pulled it to bits 3 months after I brought it new......celeron 1.8g processer......now its a T5600 core duo....ask acer and they tell you that you cant upgrade the procesor and definately not to core duo....but here it is.....running like a demon...and cooler too.....with longer battery life.......anyway.....if I get it going I suppose I'll leave it alone till Jasmine starts saying its to slow

Stu

Sounds like the dear daughter may have a hard time wrenching the little machine away from Daddy's paws a lot of the time. You sure you bought it because she was the one who liked it?

Have fun with it. I'm off to bed. Aloha.

Yeah the firmware I have to update to is version 4.1.7.

I've got that already sitting on the harddrive ready to do the update. Apparently there is a little prob though people who updated to it said it disabled there ram modules. Apparently it makes it really critical of ram. There is also a utility you can get to run first to make sure your ram is going to cut the mustard because after you update the firmware you can't update with an older version....so it's a one way trip. I've heard you have to have the update to run Tiger stable......else it's a dog.

Anyway....I better go searching for a cd to buy in ebay or something.

Thanks for the help....looks like a cool forum....I'll be back.

Stu

i took a look at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75128 and it says for iBook you need a firmware upgrade... correct me if that's wrong!?

sorry was out eating lunch, i have seen someone has been faster with reply regarding the firmware...

so good luck then, hope you can fix it!

cheers, chris

My only concern with firmware was the iMac example where even booting from an OS X installation disk on a non-updated iMac can be fatal to the motherboard. I don't see it saying on that update page that that's the case for the iBook as well, and I've not heard anyone mention the necessity of updating an iBook before booting to X,, so I suspect it's not a problem for the iBook, but since I don't own a laptop, I haven't paid too much attention to iBook discussions, so am not sure on the subject. If it's not necessary beforehand for X, then you could just buy a Panther install disk, install Panther, and go back later into your OS 9.2 and do the firmware update. Someone with an iBook will know better than I, though.

Tiger install disks are usually only on DVD disks. I've heard of versions on CD's, but they may be hard to find.

It's usually wise to be more specific in your thread titles. Including "iBook" would have made it more assured for you that those in the know would be attracted to your problem. Just a suggestion for the future.

Applefritter pages are still often unbearable slow in loading these days. I would suspect there's a lot of frustration growing with users.

Depends on how it was burned. There is no real problem with a Mac reading about any CD burned on a PC. The #1, 99.995% most common problem with people burning bootable CDs, esp. from Windows, is burning the .ISO file *itself* as a file on the CD (ie one big file on the CD), instead of directing the CD burning app to burn a CD *from* the specs and data inside the .ISO file. (ie. "Burn CD/DVD from image" or other such wording). The major reason for this problem is the Microsoft *still* doesn't include software capable of burning a disc from an .ISO, even on Premium versions of Vista. We're talking over a decade since Windows 95, the first consumer OS MS shipped on a CD, and one still needs to download a 300KB 3rd party tool to do a simple burn of an .ISO to a CD. Basically *every* other modern OS does it natively, Mac OS, Linux distros, etc. Really, What The Foul? One more reason MS really chaps my hide, and that I run Mac OS X and Ubuntu on all of my personal systems.

Actually I burned it in Ubuntu. I can see all the files on the disk in Ubuntu and Windows. I can see them on clamshell to.....but will not boot.

Anyway I've been mucking around in open firmware. With the dir command I can list all the folders and files on the hard disk. There is actually a folder called UtilitiesCD on the hard disk. This is where the clam is trying to boot from by default now, and when using options key while booting, this dir on the hard disk comes up as the only option to boot from. If I had a bootable cd......sure it would show......I dont. Anyway.....using the "boot" command from open firmware I know you can direct the mac to boot from different sources.....hd:1 hd:2 hd:1, filename......etc.......so if anybody knows the name of the file and directory that the clam should be looking to boot from in os9.2 then shouldn't I be able to use that to force boot from correct location.

Stu

This page has tips for booting a somewhat-messed up Mac, and might be applicable to you since you seem fairly competent at working from the Open Firmware prompt. Of course, you could also try holding the 'x' key at the power-up chime too. I'm kicking myself for not remembering to suggest that earlier.

I'm guessing that there is a System Folder inside the Util Cd you installed, and it got Blessed to be the bootable System. The Startup Disk CP will show every available bootable System folder the Mac can boot from. I'm guessing you might have clicked on the one on your HD and not the one on the CD. Many Util CDs were OS 9, and if your HD wasn't formatted with OS 9 drivers installed and the system is trying to boot the util software from it...

That web page was very interesting. Helpful too. It would be better if the instructions were for os9.2 instead of osx. All I'd have to do is substitute the file and directory names he used in the example for the os9.2 equals. One thing I noticed while looking at the directories on the hard disk through open firmware is that some of the directory names have a bunch of numbers and weird characters on the end.....eg....the Applications folder is something like......Applicationsblahblahblah

There are a few directories like that........so I guess my hard drive is scrambled. Being the applications directory I guess that means at least msoffice and whatever else was in there will probably be toast. So I might as well resign myself to a os9.2 bootable cd installation disk.....then I'll do the firmware upgrade....depending on how cheap I can find the software to replace the apps with......I might end up installing Ubuntu 8.04 and use all the free software available for that......also crossover office and wine will allow for running alot of windows apps too. I've got a feeling second had apps for mac tend to cost alot more then windows ones?

I actually duel boot windows xp and ubuntu on this laptop. Used to have vista when I got it...was too slow for it before I transplanted the new duel core......I themed my ubuntu up to like exactly like vista.......I've got a desktop with ubuntu themed up to look just like Leapard......maybe I can do that on the clam lol

Stu

The reason that the instructions I linked to don't have info for doing it for OS 9 is that the situation involves a hard drive that doesn't have OS 9 drivers installed - a Catch-22. If the hard disk didn't get setup with OS 9 drivers then it will not boot OS 9 from that drive, even if OS 9 is installed on it.

Ubuntu won't run WINE or Windows apps on a PPC Mac, and Windows absolutely will not boot natively, ever. It simply doesn't work. Another problem with Ubuntu on PPC is that many things (like Adobe Flash support) does not exist.

There are multitudes of apps for free for OS X. I've never bought any 3rd party software for my Macs as everything I do can be done with the included software, or with free programs. YMMV, though. As the Linux situation shows very well, one doesn't need to go to a store to get decent software anymore.

DiskWarrior is the miracle utility for Mac. It actually examines your HD directory for problems and then replaces the whole directory with the proper directory. It's one of the top must have's for Mac users. It has rescued me countless times. I'm not sure if it would solve this dilemma, but the DiskWarrior disc is bootable and it would definitely be the thing to try. You would only need the older version for OS 9--version 2.1. Used copies should be dirt cheap on eBay.