[gk365]

I wanted to recover the data from a G3 imac, so I picked up a B&W G3 at school (10.3.9, 350Mhz, 512M, 6G, collecting dust). Everything was working perfectly and I put in the 8G hard drive from the imac in slave mode(using the other connector on the hard drive ribbon cable). I tried turning on the computer and got that "struggling" sound. It didn't boot up & now the computer does absolutely nothing when I press the power button (I took out the hard drive and put it back the way it was). It is now completely dead. What happened/ what can I do?

[Gossamer]

There are a couple small buttons on the motherboard that you can press and hold for like 10 seconds or so, they should reset the motherboard. You can also try reseating your RAM chips and going through and making sure everything else is tightly plugged in.

[almaink]

"Everything was working perfectly and I put in the 8G hard drive from the imac in slave mode(using the other connector on the hard drive ribbon cable)." Not all B&W G3 had slave drive support. If you have a rev, 1 that could also be the problem.
Accelerate Your Mac! - G3 Internal IDE drive upgrade

[gk365]

"If you have a rev, 1 that could also be the problem."
It is a rev 2
"There are a couple small buttons on the motherboard that you can press and hold for like 10 seconds or so, they should reset the motherboard."
This definately helped - I have to do it every time I take out the power cord!
It seems the second hard drive is just really messed up - is there a way to try to deal with the second hard drive after the operating system was booted from the first hard drive?
If they are both plugged in, the second hard drive just lets out this struggling-like noise and I get the folder with the question mark at boot-up time.
Thanks to anyone who has replied or replies to this post!

[DrBoar]

A trivial question. Have you tried both modes of setting Master slave.
1. Both HD, jumpers set to CS (Cable Select) letting th cable select master and slave
2. Overriding the cable bu setting the the jumper on one as Master and the other one as Slave.

If you really want to get data of the disk
Disc corruption:
Use a program like Data Rescue
Products ~ Data Recovery Software Backup Partitioning and Repair Utilities. Recover Lost Data files pictures and images for Mac OS and PC
Do not try to repair the HD. Sometimes trying to repair makes bad things worse

Severe hardware problem.
There are reports of people putting the HD in the freezer, this getting the mechanics unstuck for a while so that they can boot and salvage the data

[Waragainstsleep]

I would say try installing the second drive as a replacement for your optical drive. Then see how you get on. If the drive is making noises, it is most likely FUBAR, however there are things that can be tried. I would say DO try repairing the disk. If you have Diskwarrior or Techtool, give them a blast.
If the second drive still prevents the machine from booting, it is completely wasted and you should probably give up. Stopping it booting would imply a logic board fault (the drive board, not the G3), but noises suggest an internal mechanical problem. Very unusual you would get both at once. I have seen the freezer trick work, so do give it a go. But it ought to be your last resort.

[bdww00]

hmm can you get any more of those g3s

[Tenacious Dyl]

Originally Posted by bdww00 

hmm can you get any more of those g3s

I'm not sure where you are located, but check out College "Salvage / Surplus" stores. I know the one at MSU will have anywhere from 4-10 G3's put up every week, and some weeks 2-3 G4's, all priced well ($40-100 for perfectly working towers will all parts)