Need Some Help Blue imac g3

jim11757 · #1 January 20th, 2007, 09:20 AM

hello i am new here and am in desperate need of help i just purchased approximately 100 g3's i need to reload the os and basically i have never touched a mac before i have tried holding the c button down after download mac os x 10.3 panther or tiger whichever one it was but it won't boot from cd the computers were owned by the school and they load into what looks like a program requireing a password to use i disabled the extensions by holding the shift key during boot but it still wants a password to quit using the finder or something like that any help would be great i'm not an idiot when it comes to computers but i have never used a mac so i don't knopw any of the commands or anything thanks before hand

bobw · #2 January 20th, 2007, 09:31 AM

Contact the School about this and see if you can either get the password or the name of the security program they used.

jim11757 · #3 January 20th, 2007, 10:39 AM

i run a liquidation company the computers were supposed to be erased and scrapped so i can't do that

bobw · #4 January 20th, 2007, 11:56 AM

Ok, these machines probably don't have OS X on them and most likely will need a Firmware Upgrade before you can install OS X.

You'll need an OS 9 system disk to boot from to install OS 9, the only way to upgrade the Firmware.

They could also have an Open Firmware password enabled.

jim11757 · #5 January 20th, 2007, 12:58 PM

they have mac os 9.2 and they start up and open to a scroll box with options like midterm finals period 1 ect. you have to click one and log in with a password or shut down the computer they are all from the same room i'm assuming the computer room so they were definately ran on a network i have one that works fine but i don't even know how to use it the one that works good is a g4 emac

sinclair_tm · #6 January 20th, 2007, 03:04 PM

1st thing, use punctuation!

2nd,

Quote:

Originally Posted by jim11757

...after download mac os x 10.3 panther or tiger whichever one it ...

this is illiegal, you must purchese a copy of the os for each mac. or (which is still open to debate) figure out what os each mac come with from apple brand new, and install that os. if they are all the same, then you can use one cd. everymac.com will tell you what os they came from the factory with.

3rd, as long as there isn't a firmware password, booting from the cd, then useing the boot cd to wipe out the hard drive before installing the os will take care of any password problems. if for some reason it doesn't, then you'll have to pull all the hard drives, format them on a pc, writing all zeros, then put them back into the macs and format with the os install cd.

**Cheryl** · #7 January 20th, 2007, 03:14 PM

You need the OS 9 CD to start it up (insert the CD, restart the computer and immediately hold down the C key.
Once it has started using the CD (you can tell by the different desktop), the CD should have opened. You want to use Drive Setup to wipe the drive clean using the Mac OS Extended format.
Once that is done, quit Drive Setup, use Disk First Aide to check the drive, then install OS 9.