I've seen quite a lot on this topic on the forum, so apologies if this duplicates what has already been explored. I have a beige G3 minitower, with a 300MHz board,Rev 3 ROM, 6Gb HD, and I think 353 Mb RAM. I had it running perfectly on 9.1, and regretably, attempted to install OSX, after which it is comatose.
I think the problem is something to do with the firmware. Currently on hitting start, the screen is totally blank, although at some point it hisses as though it is about to come alive. The gong sounds, and the CD drive whirrs, but I don't even get a grey screen. If I leave it running it will stay dead, although occasionally the CD whirrs. I can't get any other CD to boot now. I have checked the HD, and it seems undamaged with all files intact.
I had the same problem before, and sorted it by swapping the 233 mobo for a 300, and put 9.1c back on. Fool I am, I thought the firmware 'update' and later mobo would work!
What did I do? Well, I read the advice, and, I thought, did a firmware update. Downloaded the B/W G3 update from apple, clicked on it, and it started to open, then vanished from the desktop. I assumed it had done it's stuff, and restarted. 9.1 still fine.
I then put in the Jag CD. Restarting with 'C', I was offered a text message with two options. The first booted 9.1. The second was something like TYY IO (?). Tried this, and all went dead.
Any solutions?
Tony
i had this similar issue.
was this a fresah load of x when the blank happened, meaning, you loaded the os, the upon restart, it all went blank?
if so then open up the machine and check the jumpers on the hd. i loaded osx and then nothing happened on restart, but i set the jumper to master and all was creamy. i dont know whay this was so on mine, but maybe it could be a repeatable thing.
peace and love
ande
i just installed tiger on a machine withalmost the same specs this morning (mine had 576mb ram, an 8gb HD as master on Primary IDE channel, a 10GB as slave on Primary channel, a 16x-DVD-ROM drive as master on secondary IDE, and a 4.3GB ultrawide scsi drive on an adaptec card.)
I had a bunch of problems at first, my inital problem was that i formated the drive with the X installer, at which point nothing worked anymore. Ive also found that for X and 9 to work happy together (just my own experience mind you...) that 9 has to be 9.2.2.
my way around it was i put an OS9.1 install disc in and held down C on reboot... had to do a few reboots before it actually booted off the drive.... then, i had to re-initalize the drives that i had installed x onto. after the lengthy process, i started drive utility, reformated the drives as MacOS Extended (HFS+) and installed 9.1 onto the master drive.
the machine still did not like to boot off of this (also, forgot to mention, when i ran disk utility off of the cd, i selected the options and selected 'update disk driver' which actually revertyed it back to the old driver) so eventually it did reboot off of the 9.1 install i did.
next i went to apples website and downloaded the 9.1, 9.2.1, and 9.2.2 updates from apples site, uncompressed them and burned them to a CD.
Dragged those to the desktop and went through the updates (tried to do the 9.2.1 update first, since i had installed 9.1 already, but it said it couldnt install on the localised copy of 9.1 i had installed... have no clue what that means... anyway, ran the updaters in order, 9.1, 9.2.1, and finally 9.2.2. at this point my machine was reasonably happy and would boot in 9.2.2. I then installed xpostfacto onto the drive and used it to enable me to install OSX Tiger from my install DVD (did custom install and deselected most printer drivers and extra languages.) and about a half hour later i was playing CD's in iTunes. I have powered on and off this machine a few times, and it does operate fine in X, 9, and Classic in X. (except that for X it always starts in verbose mode)
dont know if any of that helped you, but it is what i went through this morning, with strikingly similar hardware.
...Bill.
P.S. I DONT KNOW ABOUT THE FIRMWARE UPDATE, I DIDNT DO ONE ON MINE. THE B&W FIRMWARE MAY HAVE KILLED YOUR BOARD.
I dont think the B&W firmware will install on the beige i think its imposable to do it would come up with an error if you try to install cause the logic boards are diffrent
just press and hold the cuda for 15-30 seconds its the little gray button next to the last pci slot on the logic board. ehat ever you do dont double click the button it can kill the pram battery. BTW have you replaced the pram battery. I had to take out the jummper in the drive to put it into the single master setting. and everything works fine. it is called a strap setting you can do a google search that has the drive brand name and model number since mine is a western digital i was told to do a google search like western digital hdd strap settings and it came up with WD site with a diagram on the diffrent pin numbers and how to set each one cause there is settings that arnt displayed on the hdd
Hi
I'd advise a few things:
Simple checks first. Are your mac OS partitions all within the first 8GB of the physical disc? As far as I can remember (someone correct me if I'm wrong!) the beige G3s had a problem with not being able to boot on a disc which went over the first 8GB of the disc. (EDIT! - I've just re-read your post and realised the disc is only 6GB
) I'm going to keep this in though in case anyone else has a problem! 
Secondly, how is your memory? Check that all the memory is okay. Even if it means double-checking it one by one.
The failure to boot could be caused by several things. It could be booting but into a resolution not supported by your monitor. I've experienced problems with a beige desktop G3 booting into a higher resoultion than the monitor can cope with. This is especially common on a machine where you're using a VGA(Mac) to VGA (normal) connection. (sometimes the mac can't sense what specs the monitor has so puts a too high refresh rate/and/or resolution).
It could also be the aforementioned Disc problem. There is a way around this though if you have more than one disc. I recently used XpostFacto 4.0 to install Tiger on my G3.(and yes, I know you tried Jag- but although it "should" be natively supported there may be an issue there..).My machine has got three HDs, one DVD drive and a zip disc. By using a "helper disc" (a smaller disc under 9GB in size) I was able to install Tiger on my 9GB SCSI disc without the need for extra partitioning. Head over to http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/osx-center/ for more info :).
There is of course firmware. Have you reset your firmware? Make sure you reset your nv_ram and reset_all in the open firmware screen. It's also possible from the firmware to set the disc that you want to boot from (ie the Mac OS X disc).
Finally - if you start the mac in OS X make sure you hold down the "v" key. That'll hopefully force the mac to start in verbose mode so you can at least see if the thing is booting OS X at all.
That's about all I can think of. :/
Nikki
BTW... Jag and Tiger are DOG_SLOW on a 300 Mhz G3
(I use mine as an iTunes network server for the house - and my XBMC system
BTW Bill - you can turn off verbose mode in Xpostfacto4
Just uncheck the box in the control panel 
when setting it up with XPostFacto, make sure the only 2 things that are checked in the options menu are "Verbose mode (so that you can see what is happening)" and "use NDRVS" (it might be 'ndrv', not sure) do NOT have the L2 Cache turned on, and do NOT use CPU throttling. This can cause many problems.
If it is overclocked, it might not work so great. see this page
This might now help much, but *might* be able to help you once you get fully booted for optimum performance. I suggest going with 10.3 (panther) or do like I did, get tiger. jaguar for some reason does not instal gracefully on early G3's. (in fact, none of them do.) If it is a Rev. A board and A-B rom, good luck. Those are harder to work with on OS X. You can usually look at the Area next to the CPU which should tell you along the edge
FWIW, the 8GB limit doesn't apply to SCSI.
I've installed 10.2.8 on an 18GB SCSI drive on a G3DT before, straight from the CD with the HDD on the internal SCSI bus.
Cool! I didn't know that
I just remember having problems with OS X 10.1 on my old 8500 a good few years back when XpostFacto first came out 
Oh heck yes. The cache turned on will just... kill it!
I'm not surprised OS X doesn't like early G3s. They are, after all, fast approaching seven years old! (and how many PCs do you know that are 7 years old and still running a contemporary operating system?) - of course Apple now doesn't support the early G3s on Jag or Tiger does it?
apple onlu supports 10.1 and 10.2 i beleive for the beig
10.2.8 is the farthest the beige G3 is officaly supported. but if you use xpostfacto you can go up to 10.4.3. im currently running 10.2 and can boot into 9.2.2 you can call it dual boot the only problem i had was the hdd strap setting (or better known as the master/slave jumpper setting) was wrong. but it is a rev 2 logic board and a rev b rom and runs 10.2 just fine. but tiger runs faster then jag does
Yup
That's what I meant. Apple won't talk to you though if you ring up with technical problems 
(I wrote an article a while back on installing TIger on an Old World Mac for MacFormat
)
Thanks for all your advice folks! However, I still have a dead G3. I don't really see it as an ancient computer, thanks, it runs pretty well. However, I did think I'd have a shot at OSX, especially after reading on 'LOWENDMAC" stating that it ran well on biegies with less memory than mine. I chose Jag because this is supposed to run the video card, wheras Panther does not. I don't think it's fair to say '7yrs old, not surprising'. The fact is, Beige G3's are officially supported, and the install isn't very good. Either don't support or do it properly. When OSX came out the beige wasn't so old, and by the sounds of it, install never worked properly. That's a little irresponsible!
Back to my dead machine. I never got to install OSX. The G3 didn't boot the disc - I got that text message. The CD will read, and I've opened it on the desktop. 9.1 ran like the wind. I believe OSx should run perfectly adequately, or I wouldn't be in this mess. I have tried pressing the little grey button by the pci slots, to no effect. I've no idea how to open the firmware window - surely the machine needs to run first?! Similarly, how on earth do I check monitor settings if I don't have a screen? All I get is , gong, slight hiss of static from monitor, CD whirrs. This can continue for half an hour.
I wasn't trying to dis your machine
What I was trying to say was that even though it's still meant to be working with the system it's getting a tad long in the tooth. That doesn't mean it's ready for the trash though!
- so please don't take offence! (As I said - I've still got two old PPC macs running OS X and I've got a Mac IIsi surfing the internet as I type!
Open Firmware on an old world mac is tough to get to. on a new world mac (a G3 or later mac which doesn't have a floppy built in is probably the best way of describing them) will boot into open firmware at boottime if you press a certain key. I'd forgotten this earlier. Old World Macs shouldn't have so many problems with them - so you want to just unplug it a while, take out the battery - and then press the CUDA (that switch you mentioned).
Checking monitor settings is a nightmare.. Believe me... I ended up leaving one mac for a week - without the PRAM battery in and unplugged - then reset the CUDA switch. eventually it did play nicely again.. :/
Also - (as you try to start the Mac in OS X) try holding down the "v" key. Perhaps we can coax your computer into displaying the -v (verbose) messages while it tries to boot the OS X CD.
Have you tried downloading XpostFacto and using that to help your install? I don't know if it would work but it may be a help
It almost sounds as if the mac is having problems reading the CD without a helper disc :/
Nikki
Thanks Nikki, that's sounds helpful. The CD was working fine before I started, and I've tried CS and master jumpers to no effect. I didn't use Xpost. but will if I have another go with OSX. I'm interested to hear if you all think it worthwhile - some say it's dire, some quite ok on beigies'.
When you reset the CUDA you want to leave the battery in. The CUDA is a small computer that controls the power functions of Macs, and runs off the PRAM battery when AC is disconnected. When you press the button, you cause it to reset. It needs the battery to power up and reinitialize. To reset it, unplug the AC then press the button once. Don't hold it and don't press it twice. It could crash the chip and then you would have to pull the battery for a while. After pressing the button wait about 10 secs for it to finish then plug the AC back it and try to start up.
you may want to try tiger, as i believe it to be much faster than jag or panther (even on the g3 hardware) and i'm not sure what you meant about video... the G3's onboard video (mine has 6mb vram) is supported just fine. i'm sorry your install is being problematic... all i ended up doing to get mine to work was throw together the pile of parts that WERE going to the garbage.... (ended up with a decent 300mhz g3, 6mb vram, 512mb ram, 40x cd drive and many hard drives.) made sure my primary master drive was 8gb or less.... installed 9, updated it to 9.2.2, (swapped out the cd drvie for a 16x dvd drive for the install as the cd drive was painfully slow) install Xpostfacto, and popped in my Tiger DVD. upon install of tiger i deselceted all the languages i knew i wouldnt use, and all of the printer drivers except for the ones i needed. installed in about a half hour, with video all the time.. and now works just fine, went to apples site and did all the updates... up to 10.4.3, new itunes, everything!! its a little slow, but i mean it is a 300mhz G3. runs office great!! i even popped a USB card into it and plugged in my kensington USB Bluetooth2 adapter and was able to sync the G3 with my motorola RAZR via bluetooth. AMAZING!! (oh, and thanks for that info about verbose mode... i had mistakenly left it set for verbose.) the machine performs great in 9 and x. (although, a little better in 9, of course i cant do anyhting i need to do in nine, so that doesnt matter to me.)
Bill
Have you tried swapping the CD-Rom drive? Sometimes OS X does not like to install on anything less than a DVD-Rom Drive
is the cd rom drive set to master, is the hdd on its own ide cable and set to master or single master???. the beige G3 can go to open firmware just as easy as anything els can by holding command-option-o-f at start chime and then type init-nvram (press enter/return) then type set-defaults (press enter/return) then type reset-all (press enter/return). that will reset nvram (or aka open firmware) on a beige G3 the init-nvram is the same as reset-nvram on newer Mac's have you replaced the pram battery. ive installed OS X 10.2 (the universal install cd's the white with jaguar colored X in the middle) on my beige in my sig and havent have a problem yet
Thanks for the info. Removing the PRAM batt and pressing CUDA got me to the mac?, and after removing the HD and disc doctoring I was back to 9.1 running as before, no files lost.
By video I meant the pci card for video input. My main problem with 9.1, thus considering OSx, is that browsers are VERY slow with ebay. I may be taking the wrong tack, as it's not clear where the hitch lies. I have a PC (700 Athlon) with linux knoppix and Win XP loaded. knoppix is also very slow (I timed 7mins to open a page), but XP only a few seconds. I've tried other isps (using a 56k robotics modem on both systems). XP is pretty scary, as I'm nearly always warned of a trojan moments after logging on to ebay! I don't understand why the least desirable os should be so much faster.
AAAAAAHAHAHAHAH!
You have a PCI video card installed?!
Suddenly it all makes sense
I think you'll find that that particular machine doesn't like booting onto a PCI video card. I know mine will only display a screen on the motherboard's video card.
Take out your PCI video card - and attach your montior to your Mac's internal video card
Then try installing OS X
Have you got your Beige G3 into Open Firmeware MadMax?
I thought it was the last of the Oldworld machines which didn't let you boot directly into open firmware. I thought the Blue and White G3 Towers were the first Open Firmware machines other than the iMac. :/
nooooo, it's the video INPUT thingie, that takes the signal from a video camera! But thanks, I didn't know that about the vid card - I have one, and it's only by chance it's not in there.
Cheers,
Tony (ps, I have a 2CV, but I do like morris')
Pooh... Erm... Are you in the UK?
yes! (?)
Well - being in the Bath Area I can help if you're nearby
I'm in Leicester! Guess that's a bit far - much appreciated. I really need to understand why ebay is slow. I thought of OsX as a possible thing to try, as it's better in several ways, but not so good if v slow, or Yellow Dog, which I have a copy of. I'm not entirely sure if OS 9 is as secure, even if I get a browser to speed up. I'd keep it on, of course.
Tony.
i have a ati radion 7000 Mac edition pci card installed on this beige G3 AIO and i run 9.2.2 and OS X i can see it use the pci video as soon as i power on i can see the happy mac face on the pci video when i am booting to 9.2.2 and can see the grey apple logo with the spinning gear at the bottom of the screen when i turn the beuge on and boot with OS X 10.2 on the pci video or i can switch to the onboard video to show the bootup. it runs just fine. my video card fire's right up as soon as i power it up it shows the boot screens either way i boot at power on.
yea a Beige G3 AIO, MT, DT all can go into open firmware on startup by holding command-option-o-f.
Mine doesn't
I think you're okay with that card because it's one similar enough to the hardware that Apple put in their later G3 and G4 machines
My G3 doesn't like the video though
I guess I didn't get lucky!
are you refering to the personality card? with A/V ins and outs (which actually isnt a PCI card, its kind of its own slot) if so, then yes... that is not supported under OSX. thats just the way it is. it wont work. safari on OSX is much faster than IE on 9. actually the whole machine is pretty damn zippy with OSX on it... i also found on this very site a guide for installing X on a G3:
http://www.applefritter.com/node/2852
the specs are a bit different, but that may help you as well.
EDIT: i also havent tried dial up on this machine as i dont have a modem, i use it with an asante 10/100 PCI ethernet card to connect to my LAN (internet acess is through cable)
No!
I know what the personality card is 
I have a PCI based video cad in the G3 desktop I have (I'll look next time it's out of it's mini server cupboard:)
It doesn't like OS X - probably because the chipset is too old/incompatible with the OS X drivers
My machine is fine on OS X btw