PowerMac g3 won't work

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PowerMac g3 won't work
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I have a PowerMac G3 300Mhz and it recently stopped working. I thought it was the PRAM battery so I had gotten a new one. But before that it wouldn't mount my hard drives, and than it wouldn't even show them when I went in the cd Disk Utilites and it wouldn't show them. It has video I can boot in to 10.1 server cd and into openfirmware. I al open to most ideas. I have 10.4.11 server and 10.1 server on it but can't boot from ether :macos:

MaxTek's picture
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What motherboard do you have

What motherboard do you have in it? Rev.1 or Rev 2.

Rev. 2 is recommended for anything past OS 9.2.2

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http://resale.headgap.com/osxnotesbw.html

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Rev 1 or 2

I have the revision 2 motherboard

Hawaii Cruiser's picture
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to start: bad hd?

You've got both systems on one hard drive with two partitions, or two hard drives with a system each? Can you hear the drive(s) spinning up?

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Bad HD

Yes i can hear the hard drives start up. I even took 1 of my HD's out of it to make sure it wasn't that

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Strip it down to the bare bon

Strip it down to the bare bones--one hard drive, one stick of RAM, video card only--remove the battery for ten minutes, hit the CUDA button once (only once), put the battery back in--if it doesn't boot after that, try a different stick of RAM. Connect the hard drive cable to the other ATA connector on the motherboard which the CD drive uses and try a boot. Got another ATA cable to try? If not, you could always connect the drive to the CD's cable. Another possibility is that the molex power connector for the hard drive is not giving enough juice, so try the other power connectors on the hard drive. Still no go, then get another hard drive and see if you can install an OS onto it. Of course, you could easily buy another B&W for the cost of a hard drive, or much better yet, an AGP G4 tower. There's a slight chance that a DiskWarrior CD might see the hard drive, but I wouldn't bet on it--but a copy of DiskWarrior should be in any Mac user's arsenal. I read that Drive Genius is supposed to be pretty good too.

Wait, you've got two hard drives already, and you've tried both as single masters, then it's unlikely a new hard drive will mean anything. A replacement motherboard off eBay shouldn't cost more than $10, but with all the idiosyncrasies of the B&W, I'd say it's past time to move on.

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Strip it down to bare bon

al ready did all that stuff besides new hd and mobo

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ESP

You've replaced the motherboard and hard drive? You know, it would have been helpful if you HAD MENTIONED THAT EARLIER! We've wondered on this site before if there is someone or someones who make false posts to annoy us all. I'm through here.

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ESP

I said that I DID NOT change the HD and MOBO

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Semantical misunderstanding

Sorry, I was beginning to feel like you were giving me a run around.

I misread your use of the word "besides." "Besides" usually means, "in addition to," as in, "besides also." "I already did all that stuff besides also a new hd and mobo." Whereas, you meant to say, "I already did all that stuff but not a new hd and mobo." "Besides" can be effectively used to mean "except for" when used in correlation with a negative affirmation, "I didn't do any of that stuff besides a new hd and mobo." Technically, you could use it to mean "except for" the way you did, but most people will not read it the way you meant it. "Besides" is generally a weak linking word that should be used sparingly since there is as much ambiguity in its use as there is meaning. Strive for clarity. You'll have to stay in the classroom during recess and construct ten sentences using the word "besides" and then I'll tell you the secret miracle which will bring your hard drives to mount.

So what do you mean when you say you can boot into the 10.1 CD? This is an installation CD? If so, then when you go through the installation windows to install and it arrives at the window where it displays the hard drives available to install on, then no hard drives show up in that window? Or also, while booted into the CD, if you open Disk Utility it shows no hd's?

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thanks for all your help

I final got it to work thank you all for your help

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