iMac 266 Mhz won't upgrade to OSX 10.2

bigbadbill

bigbadbill

Flaccid Member
I've got an original iMac 266 Mhz that I eventually upgraded to 10.1 then to 10.2 with no problems at all. I maxed out the ram and upgraded the HD and it's still a great little computer for my tasks at home, mostly surfin' and e-mail. So when my employer asked my advice doing an upgrade on a 266Mhz iMac in our office from 9.1 to 10.2, I replied with a confident thumbs-up, grabbed their newly purchased "$129 Upgrade" and got to work.

"I think it can ... I think it can ... I think it can"

I booted the iMac up by CD and hit my first stumbling block, the fact that there wasn't enough HD space left to install. So I restarted back into 9.1 and cleaned up the 4Gb HD a bit, freeing up 2Gb's.

Again, I booted by CD but this time all I got was a blank screen. No indication of life, whatsoever. No spinning clock or beachball, no blue screen of death —nothing. As if the monitor wasn't turned on. The power button on the face of the iMac also never glowed green, just stayed it's yellow sleeping color.

Hmmm. I shut it down, zapped the PRAM and tried again ... same blank screen.

I booted back into 9.1, backed up all needed files via ethernet, and tossed the rest. Then attempted to boot with the 10.2 CD again, but still the blank screen.

I then booted by a 9.2 CD with no problem and did a clean install of 9.2. (That'll do it, I thought.) I then restarted the computer, not by CD, but my newly installed 9.2.2. I then popped in the 10.2 CD opened the start-up disk control panel and selected the 10.2 CD as the start-up disk, and clicked restart. SAME BLANK SCREEN!!!

I stared at the screen, returning the same blank expression my iMac was giving me, and couldn't help but think of the iMac commercial where the guy is exchanging facial expressions with the new iMac. :p

What am I to do now? My employers are patiently awaiting their wonder-boy to work a miracle here, but I'm outta tricks. Anyone have any ideas as to what would be happening here? Is this just a coincidental hardware issu? There doesn't seem to be a firmware update needed. And it already started by the OSX 10.2 CD once!?! HELP!!!!
 
I finally found an answer. I inserted to 10.2 Install Disk and restarted, holding down the option key and it just started up. I don't get it, but it worked. On to OSX 10.2 ... YEAH!!!!!!!
 
Huh. one would have thought that after zapping pram, holding down C and starting up from the CD would have worked. Oh well. Thank God for the Option key. Thanks for the story, as this will probably help somebody else figure something out one day. I know I'm filing it away in MY Mac-consulting Mental File Drawer....
 
The upgrade went fine. I had to initialize the HD, but that's no biggie. Then the monitor was a little off so I opened the Sytem Pref's and selcted monitors. When I changed the settings I was given a notice that the settings would change and the screen may even go black, but if I waited 15 seconds it would return to it's original settings. Well the screen went black and never came back. I've rebooted, zapped the PRAM and even started up with an OS 9.1 CD with no luck. This SUX!!! We have 3 other iMac in the office that we'd like to take to OS 10.2 but I am seriously having second thoughts (about Apple in general) WTF!?!

Any ideas on how to revert to my old monitor settings???
 
Do you mean that even starting on the 9.1 system CD it did not work ? This would mean that your monitor or the graphic card is dead...
 
Yes, even when booting with a CD the screen won't come back on. The power button stays in it's sleep mode (red glow). It's as if the monitor won't "wake up". I really don't think the monitor or graphics card is dead just because of the way it happened. I think that the monitor settings have changed and I'm not sure how I am to revert the settings. Are these setting stored somewhere other then the system folder which would cause it to keep them even when started by CD?
 
If the mac stays in sleep mode, then your problem is different.

Maybe the CD drive is dead... or the keyboard connection ?
 
OK ... boy oh boy ... check THIS out!

I opened the iMac up — hoping to find some sort of reset switch on the monitor. I didn't find a reset switch, but I did realize I could plug in another monitor. So connected a second monitor to the iMac. (I needed an adapter to do this, but luckily found one here in the office that would fit.) The monitor came on-line! I then switched the settings back to the original 600 x 800 95Hz, powered down, and put her back together.

One iMac upgraded to OSX 10.2 ... 2 to go. Boy that was easy! NOOOOOOT!!!

WTF Apple !?!
 
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