troubleshooting G3 iMac

R

rlmut

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I just bought a 350Mhz iMac (no keyboard or mouse) for a very cheap price, but knowing it more than likely has a problem.
Well it does, of course, it boots up to a flashing question mark.

One problem I'm having is that I am using a regular keyboard so I am not sure what location my keys are suppose to be?? I borrowed a OS 9 restore disk(wich I can't get to eject now!) and tried the boot with the "C" pressed. Nothing happened, tried again with "ALT C" and I got a funky window with two buttons and my mouse started working. One button is a circular arrow and the other is a straight arrow pointing to the right.

Using a regular USB PC keyboard:
- can I eject the CD with the keyboard?
- what would the "command" & "option" keys be?

I doubt that it will help but I was going to try and reset the PRAM.
Unless this keyboard will not work, I want to try resetting the system be for looking at the harddrive.

Any advice is appreciated. This is my first troubleshooting attempt.
 
It's a slot loading system. Tried booting to the restore cd by pressing the "c" button. Only got a response by pressing the "alt c" button. Can't figure out the command-option-p-r to reset the PRAM. Can put my ear to it and can hear something spin up and then down. I think it's the cd player and that I'm not hearing the hard drive.
 
I don't know whether you can actually boot from a restore CD... Beneath the two arrows you should see icons of the available bootable volumes: if you see none, there ain't any. What you need is a bootable system disk with a full OS on it...

Indeed your HD could be broken, but it's more likely that it's simply empty, as in formatted.
 
The CD said it was bootable. I may be cracking it open tonight to swap out the hard drive. Do you know what the "command" key would be on a regular PC keyboard?

thanks for the info.
 
The PC keyboard that I use with my Mac, has the important keys in the same physical locations as a standard Mac keyboard.
1st bottom left (CTRL=control)
2nd bottom left (windows=option)
3rd bottom left (Alt=command/Apple)

F12 on my keyboard ejects CDs (this might vary on different PC keybaords)

'C' should be 'C', regardless of the type of keyboard
Try this to reset your system
Windows-Alt-O-F (that's the letter O)
you should se several lines of text, then a prompt for Open Firmware. At the prompt, type 'reset-nvram', you should get an 'ok', then type 'reset-all', your computer will reboot, then I would suggest holding the 'windows' key, which should bring up the boxes with curved and startight arrows that you have seen before. If there is any bootable disks in the system, you should see them, the Hard Drive is probably wiped (or simply dead) The iMac restore CD or MacOS system install CD should be visible here, the whirring sounds is typical of a CD Rom attempting to read. Wait here for a couple of minutes, there is a delay here before all choices have been scanned. Give it up to 5 minutes before deciding nothing else will appear. If a CD disk image appears, click on that, then click the right arrow. If things are working at all, your system should nowe boot to that disk, and you can go from there. Good Luck.
It's entirely possible that a dead Hard Drive will prevent any disk from displaying here (all connect to the same IDE bus in an iMac)
 
Thanks for the detailed info. DeltaMac! That will help a lot.

I got to play with a Mac for two weeks a work and decided that I want one. Been saving up for a new one when I stumbled across this one at a university sale. Paid $30 for it. Kind of in a bad spot, I've built pleanty of PCs but never even done a install on a Mac. Don't know what's normal or whats not working. Hate spending money on a Mac keyboard if it has a motherboard problem. If I get the OS to load then I can get a better keyboard, memory, and bigger hard drive. If it's too far gone I'll sell it for parts or turn it into a fish tank:)
 
Sorry, forgot to mention that I think I have pressed every key on the keyboard and couldn't get it to eject the cd. Somebody told me to hold the mouse button down and then power on. Haven't had a chance to try that yet. Will when I get off of work later on today.

thanks,
 
The only likely on-keyboard botton should be f12. May not be possible without a working operating system, as it probably requires all the USB software in a normal OS install, which I guess you don't have yet. If you still can't get a CD to eject, there's a tiny emergency eject button (has to be powered up to work) at the far right end of the slot. You should be able to see a small hole in the foam. Power on, unfolded paper clip (an old Apple master Key!) push gently in the little hole, the CD should power out! But holding the mouse botton down at power up should work also.
 
Thanks again, hadn't tried to look for the eject button yet. Didn't know if I was going to have to take the front cover off the unit or not. Glad it's the weekend so I can dedicate more time to work on it. Thanks for the help.
 
Well, it's not a button, it's a little hole. Most media drives have them; you've probably seen them on your PC's.

The screen you get when holding Alt-C, with the arrow buttons, is the OS selection screen. You're supposed to be able to select from all your OS's, so you can choose one build of OS X over another, or OS 9, for example (though OS 9 doesn't appear on mine :(). If you don't see any buttons that have an X or a 9 on them, you don't have a valid system installed.
 
Just as a side note, I have seen two of the first generation slot-load iMacs (yours), and one other in which the hard drives have gone bad. I think its a heat issue since they don't have any fans. The problems you are describing sound similar to the ones i repaired with the exception of not starting off the CD.




EDIT: I really meant the first gen of slot loading iMacs :)
 
JohnnyV - the first gen (trayload CD) imac all have fans. The 2nd gen (slotload) iMac does not have fans, rlmut says he has a 350 mHz, which would be a 2nd gen fanless. I agree, the HD and CD rom seem to get pretty warm, bu I'm not sure if you could pin a hard drive failure to overheating on these units. I have always propped the front up on mine(built-in leg bracket), seems to get better circulation. The units use convection cooling, which works pretty good, you should feel the heat out the top at times, (if the heat is out the top, then it's cooler at the bottom) heat rises and pulls the heat up through the 'chimney' vent, that's how it works, no fan needed. It's also mostly dead silent, with a good quiet hard drive
Arden, there is a button, but you can't see it. I described the position of a small hole in the CD slot foam. A paper clip, or similar small item presses the switch which is behind that hole, and powers the CD out (power has to be on, it's not a mechanical release)
 
A quick update for everybody on troubleshooting my iMac.

Found the cause of the no-boot, there was no freaken hard drive in it!! Couldn't tell until I got the bottom cover off. Depending on the department it can from at the collage, that somewhat standard for them. The largest IDE drive I had lying around was a old 1.28GB HDA. For a while I thought the logic board was bad. Scanning the system would not find the HDA. I even took the logic board off and looked it over. I put it back together and decided to play around with it some more figuring it would end up sitting idle until I found a reasonable priced logic board. During my playing with the disk utilities in OS 9.0 it found the drive! So at this moment I have OS 10.1 on it and I'm testing it for a couple of days, making sure it doesn't have any thermal related problems before I order a real hard drive and at least one 512MB stick of memory. Will probably go ahead and get a Apple Pro keyboard for itl. For now it seems to be running well.

Thanks again for all the suggestions. Been a intresting learning process.
 
Awesome! It's so annoying when it's one of the little things that get you, isn't it? "Let's see, Disk Utility can't find the HD... my installer CD can't find the HD... the option trick can't find the HD... hey, I can't find it either!"

I recommend you get a Mac keyboard with more than the usual set of buttons, like play, pause, Internet, email, etc. as you see with PC keyboards, since many are excellent and often lower cost than Apple's boards ($49 US).

And an iSight.

For me.

;)
 
It is truly a shame that when you bought the machine they did not say a word about no hard drive. :mad:
I would not trust them again. ;)

Glad you got things running. :)
 
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