thatcrazylaxdude Posted December 30, 2006 Share Posted December 30, 2006 Hello, I've got an old Imac here I'm doing an Imac to ATX conversion on. I've got everything made and it works, except for one small problem. It won't load OSX. It may be the firmware, but 1) I don't know where to get the new firmware, and 2) I don't have or can get a hold of previous versions of Mac OS. The even weirder thing is that it will install Ubuntu, be it terribly slow and laggy (Ubuntu 5.10), it does work. My other question is, In order to get it to boot to a CD, I used the cd drive connected to the slim connector. I couldn't get it to boot to the normal IDE drives I have here. Does anyone know if there is a drive that it will boot to? Will it boot to a USB cd drive? OSX can access my USB DVD-RW drive, as I had to use it to install it on my laptop (didn't like the built in drive - ati chipset). Thanks a lot! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Nonny Moose Posted December 30, 2006 Share Posted December 30, 2006 It depends on the iMac model. You can ONLY update the firmware via Mac OS 9, so you will need to boot it. Even with that, the iMac rev a will only run OS 10.3.9 at best (without some hacking). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thatcrazylaxdude Posted December 30, 2006 Author Share Posted December 30, 2006 It depends on the iMac model. You can ONLY update the firmware via Mac OS 9, so you will need to boot it. Even with that, the iMac rev a will only run OS 10.3.9 at best (without some hacking). It is a Rev. A 233mhz G3 Bondi Blue Imac. I tried using a 10.3.9 disc to install. Will OS 9 run on the firmware that originally came on the Imac? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
user2 Posted December 30, 2006 Share Posted December 30, 2006 It is a Rev. A 233mhz G3 Bondi Blue Imac. I tried using a 10.3.9 disc to install. Will OS 9 run on the firmware that originally came on the Imac? Yes, it was designed for os 9. You can download the firmware from Apple web site. OsX will be crazy slow on a 233, I hope you have at least 512mb of ram. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thatcrazylaxdude Posted December 30, 2006 Author Share Posted December 30, 2006 Yes, it was designed for os 9. You can download the firmware from Apple web site. OsX will be crazy slow on a 233, I hope you have at least 512mb of ram. It's not going to be that slow. My friend had OSX running on a 233mhz biege G3 IIRC, and it was just fine. Basically all I'm going to do is run it as an Itunes music server or something on it. nothing extreme. Possibly my torrent downloader/server. idk. but thanks for the help. Can anybody else help me on the cd-rom booting problem? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mebster Posted January 2, 2007 Share Posted January 2, 2007 You did hold 'c' while booting? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
asap18 Posted January 2, 2007 Share Posted January 2, 2007 FreeBSD will do all you want including a itunes music server with daapd. Anyway powerpc macs cannot boot from usb, only from firewire. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mebster Posted January 2, 2007 Share Posted January 2, 2007 FreeBSD will do all you want including a itunes music server with daapd. Anyway powerpc macs cannot boot from usb, only from firewire. I think it can. It booted up from my USB cd-rw drive but i managed to solve my own G3 boot issues and didn't need to use the USB cd-rw drive to install OS X. I used the internal cd-rom drive instead. Things started getting better once I did what odrex sugested in post 2 in this thread of mine. I don't know if you issue is the same but I hope it helps. PS: I noticed another major issue with OS X booting was the cd-r/dvd-r. They had to be spotless. And even then some gave errors or were slow. Also depends on what you used to create them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thatcrazylaxdude Posted January 5, 2007 Author Share Posted January 5, 2007 I hold 'c' while booting and everything. I got everything hooked up right, and now it wont even load ubuntu (it did before). This imac drove me nuts before, and several months later it is doing it again. lol. right now this is the setup: the board itself, my power adapter, atx psu, hard drive with 8.6 (i believe?) on the IDE channel, and an ibook cdrom drive on the atapi channel with an atapi cable. I even tried a dvd-rom out of a dell, same results. I've tried a 10.3.5 cd that does work, because I used it on my friends B&W, an Ubuntu 5.10 install cd that worked before (but now doesn't), an Ubuntu 5.10 live cd, and Yellow Dog Linux 4.1. My friend says that it cannot find a bootable device. any opinions? AcePlayer- How did you get it to boot to your USB cd-rw drive? just hold 'c'? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mebster Posted January 5, 2007 Share Posted January 5, 2007 I'm not exactly sure what made my thing work all of a sudden because it certainly didn't want to for a few days. I tried a few things out and for that reason not sure what exactly it was that did the job. One thing that it taught me was not to give up any time soon. Firstly make sure you have the correct firmware installed (if that’s needed for your system) before you install OSX 10.2. To install the firmware you will need OS 9 already installed and working. The firmware download page is here. Then if it still doesn't install try following this given to me by odrex: As the computer boots up press and leave pressed the following keys...command + option + O + F This should boot you into a white Open Firmware screen. Once there do... reset-nvram set-defaults reset-all Try booting from cd by pressing and leaving the "C" button pressed or pressing and leaving pressed the "Option-Command-Shift-Delete" keys. ------------------------------- I was having problems with my cd's (4 of them) which OS X was installed in. The first one would start but then cause an error during installation. Thought it might be the cd drive and so i connected my USB external cd-rw drive, It seemed to read fine but I remember a problem at some point. I can't fully remember whether it was the cd issue again or the fact that the cd-rw drive just would only go so far. Anyway i re-burned it onto a different set of cd-rs and everything worked fine then on. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Nonny Moose Posted January 6, 2007 Share Posted January 6, 2007 to boot from an external CD Drive, you can hold the option key down when you boot. Hopefully it will work I think you guys are thinking of an external USB drive booting, which won't work unless you're running some version of 10.4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thatcrazylaxdude Posted January 7, 2007 Author Share Posted January 7, 2007 My desk is pretty messy right now, so I put the Imac back into its box for now. I will try it probably tonight, gotta reformat my laptop first. As for holding down the option key, what key is that again? I only have a USB keyboard, and it doesn't have the mac buttons. I know it is either alt or the windows key, because I hold those down with O and F to get into the Open Firmware. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thatcrazylaxdude Posted January 7, 2007 Author Share Posted January 7, 2007 (edited) It works! I followed AcePlayer's advice. booted to the laptop cd-drive on the laptop ide-channel. thanks everybody for helping! Edited January 7, 2007 by thatcrazylaxdude Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mebster Posted January 8, 2007 Share Posted January 8, 2007 It works! I followed AcePlayer's advice. booted to the laptop cd-drive on the laptop ide-channel.thanks everybody for helping! Man it takes me back to the day I managed to get mine to work. Happy days!!! Glad to help and it's great that it worked. Now the task of making it usefull. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thatcrazylaxdude Posted January 8, 2007 Author Share Posted January 8, 2007 haha, thanks man. but now I have a new problem. So it doesn't boot to the laptop dvd drive i have, but it can read it after osx is installed. I updated to 10.3.9, and used pacifist to install the dvd player that comes with it. I installed the app and the frameworks, but it crashes and says it "unexpectedly quit". I'm currently going through everything with "dvd" in the name and installing it to the default location, but it still crashes. Is this due to the fact that I updated to 10.3.9? the crash report says that it is version 4.0 Exception: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (0x0001) Codes: KERN_PROTECTION_FAILURE (0X0002) AT 0X00000024 Also, are there any recommendations for USB -> PS/2 converters so I can use the imac with my kvm switch? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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