Problem with iMac G3 and OS 9

[brock1912]

I have a iMac G3 with the following specs:

500 MHz G3
1GB ram
80GB HD
DVD-ROM drive
Firmware 4.1.9f1
Currently has OS X 10.4.11 installed
Hard drive does have OS 9 drivers installed

I'm trying to install OS 9. I have what is supposed to be the bootable disc, but no matter what I do the computer will not boot from it. Inside OS X the disc is readable and works fine. I've tried holding down the C key at boot, but it just goes into OS X. I've tried holding the option key at boot, but it only shows the hard drive as an option. I've tried the shift-option-apple-delete combo but this gives me the folder with a question mark. I tried putting the original 20GB hard drive back in, but this didn't change anything. The pram battery is dead, could this make a difference? I'm really stuck here, help please!

If needed, the original specs of the computer are:
500 MHz G3
128MB RAM
20GB HD
CD-RW drive
(500/IN/128/20/CDRW/ULTRA/56K/FW/VGA printed on the bottom label)
Firmware was 4.1.7, and had OS 9 and OS X 10.2 when I acquired this machine.

[MisterMe]

Originally Posted by brock1912

... The pram battery is dead, could this make a difference? ...

Ya think?

There are two ways to boot from a CD:

• Start-up the computer while pressing the [c] key.
• Insert the CD prior to a restart. Choose the CD as your startup volume from System Preferences. Restart.

If neither of these work, then you should replace that PRAM battery. Well, you should replace the PRAM battery in any event.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

What kind of OS 9 disk is it? A retail version? A system-specific version that shipped with a Mac computer?

[brock1912]

I did try selecting the cd as the startup disk in system prefs, but when I clicked restart is just 'dinged' at me which I guess means it didn't want to.

The disk is supposed to be a retail 9.2.1 disk.

[ElDiabloConCaca]

The disk is supposed to be a retail 9.2.1 disk.

What does this mean? Look at the CD -- is it a retail disk or not?

[brock1912]

Its a burned copy from an iso image

[ElDiabloConCaca]

Its a burned copy from an iso image

That may be the problem right there, for two reasons:

1) It's not a legitimate copy of OS 9, and therefore, is against the license agreement. I know, I know, OS 9 is old and dead, but it's still commercial software in Apple's eyes. Jus' statin' the facts.

2) If the ISO was made incorrectly, you may lose bootability with it. You may need to "bless" the system folder on the CD by copying the contents to your hard drive, performing a "bless" operation, then correctly burning it to a new CD.

You may or may not get help with those things here -- using a burned copy of an ISO image of OS 9 is in the "gray area," legally: unknown legality, but tending toward violating the license agreement of OS 9. This board is strictly legit all the way, so it's unclear to me whether this type of thing can be discussed or not. There are a ton of other websites that do discuss these types of things, though.

[brock1912]

Thanks for your help, I think what i'll try next is booting some other iMacs with this cd. We have a at least 10 of these G3's at my school, maybe one of those will work.