Keyboard has no efect on boot-up

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Keyboard has no efect on boot-up

I have a PowerBook G3 (400) Lombard with OS9 installed. Now I've been trying to install OSX 10.3 with no avail.

Neither pressing C, T or ALT seem to have any effect, it still boots straight to OS 9. I can hear the DVD drive starting but that's all. It would seem as though the keyboard is first recognised after OS 9 has booted...

I did try changing the start volume to the DVD drive which cause a alternating mac OS face and a question mark for a couple of seconds before it returned to booting OS 9 again.

Also I

Now what I would really like is to install OSX on a USB stick and leave the OS 9 alone...

Any ideas? I would be grateful for any help.

Regards, Steve.

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Re: Keyboard has no efect on boot-up

That machine will not boot off a USB Stick. You need an external firewire hdd.

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Re: Keyboard has no efect on boot-up

A few questions:

1. Are you using an original OS X install disc, or a burned copy?
2. Is the disc a DVD or a CD? If it's a DVD, do you know which disc drive module you have in your PowerBook? In that era, the standard drive only read CDs, a DVD drive was optional.
3. If you leave the disc in the drive when the machine boots into OS 9, can you open the disc and see the files on it?

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Re: Keyboard has no efect on boot-up

i would like to add that a lombard did not come with firewire. i believe the only way you can boot external drive on that is with the scsi adapter. pismo was first laptop with firewire

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Re: Keyboard has no efect on boot-up

Hi and thanks for the reply.
I am using an original DVD I do have a DVD drive and I can see the files (I.E. it does recognize the DVD) from OS 9.
However it only seems to boot to OS 9 on the hard disk and does not seem to recognise the keyboard until it has finished booting. So no key combo works and it doesn't even try to find an alternative drive.
Oh and the DVD is for a iMac G5, but the Keyboard combos should still try to boot from it even if it dosn't work!
Regards Steve

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Re: Keyboard has no efect on boot-up

Did you check the prefenrences in the system defaults ?
seems that some system defaults have been changed ....
default boot device ?
default boot volume ?
default keyboard driver ?
default hot key ?
it´s quite 2 decades ago since i have been using my G3 with the OS9 system....
but i do remember that within the system devices and the system folders several
setup conditions may be altered / disabled or changed....

and not all of that setup preferences are dependent to ( stored at )the startup volume...
some are stored in the CMOS....

some users here rather more familiar currently using OS9 ( and not offtopic
for more than 2 decades like me ) might pass over hints related to this stuff....

One of the problems you fight along with is the fact that external devices only get usable
after their drivers have been loaded from the startup volume...

so the safe way was / will be to reduce the size of the bootup volume and
create a second bootup volume containing the alternate OS content....

if i remember correct i performed such a task when upgrading my G3 to OS 10.2
i inserted a blank lowlevel formatted harddisk in the computer, disconnected the previously used one
and then the system discovered a computer with blank systemdisk...

and entered the fdisk utilities to enable creating a startup volume and the after rebooting
the system started to install OS9 to the present partition .... after that i created a second new partition....

and set it as startup partition... when rebooting again the alternate system disk perrmitted to
install a alternate OS to the alternate partition...

thereafter i was able to install to the alternate partition the SCSI drivers of the internal
Adaptec 2907 controller and make another partitions at the external SCSI devices...

but again that was a task performed far back time ago...

speedyG

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Re: Keyboard has no efect on boot-up

...Oh and the DVD is for a iMac G5...

That's likely the problem. Apple built OS X restore discs in such a way to keep people from using them the way you're trying (recall that this was back in the era when Apple still charged for OS X upgrades). I think the machine is actually trying to boot from the disc, but is failing right away because it's not compatible. You might want to consider tracking down a "retail" OS X DVD, and that will likely work better for you.

(Supposedly there was a way to "rebuild" those machine-specific discs to be generic by changing a few files and burning them to disc, but it's been long enough that I can't remember the details.)

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Re: Keyboard has no efect on boot-up


Supposedly there was a way to "rebuild" those machine-specific discs to be generic by changing a few files and burning them to disc, but it's been long enough that I can't remember the details.)

See above:

......and not off topic for more than 2 decades like me.......
One of the problems you fight along with is the fact that external devices only get usable after their drivers have been loaded from the startup volume...

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