Hi I decided to enter the world of Apple after the usual problems that you encounter using Windows, you know the ones so I wont go on about it. Anyway I decided to purchase a Beige G3 from ebay to see what a powermac is like and at the moment I am having a few problems.
When I first got the machine I did not have an adaptor to plug in to my pc monitor, so I decided just to start it up anyway to see what it was like and I was greeted by a small jingle. I did this a few times, and then when I powered it up again the jingle was gone which I thought was strange.
Today I received an adaptor and rushed around to get this powermac all set up. Upon starting OS 9.2 it checked the disk as the machine was not shut down properly, after checking it asked me to continue and the os 9.2 logo appeared on the screen, at this point I was getting rather excited but suddenly the following error occured.
Sorry A System Error Has Occured, Bus Error
Being new to Powermacs my first reaction was shit what have I done. Anyway after looking around the net I have tried several things to try and get this thing booted but without any luck. I have tried the following.
Pressing shift to turn extensions off
Zapping the PRAM
But I am still getting this System Error appearing.
What I wanted to know is do you think that I may need to reinstall the Operating System or Do I have a hardware problem.
Problem is no OS came with the machine so I cannot install a new OS on it.
Your help advice would be greatly appreciated.
Many Thanks
You might have some dead ram. If it is not that, pull every non essential thing off of the bus (i.e.:pci Cards, floppy drives, cd-rom) and see if it still does it. (try this config. Case, 1 ram module, HDD, monitor, kbd/mouse, no or 1 vram in sockets.) after all that is taken out, press the CUDA/PM RESET button (I don't remeber when they started using the CUDA button) if it fires up correctly, try put the stuff back in (1 item at a time) When it starts doing it again... the last item you put in is toast.
This could be a sign of bad RAM.
I have also seen this symptom on Beige G3's that do not have a personality card. They seem quite unstable without them using System 9.
But if you got a startup chime it seems yours might have one installed.