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davehill · Sep 26, 2003, 09:51 AM

Last night I loaded OS X 10.4.2 on an iMac G3 (I've also got 8.6 on the machine) and every thing seemed to work fine.

Now . . . this morning, I can't get the machine to boot up.

I get a gray screen with a little note in the upper left hand corner telling me the machine will not boot up.

Any suggestions?

Thank you.

Uday's Carcass · Sep 26, 2003, 08:31 PM

boot from a CD-ROM, be it 8/9.x or OS X. Run Disk Utility.

there is no 10.4. What specific version did you install?

CharlesS · Sep 27, 2003, 01:10 AM

Originally posted by davehill:
I get a gray screen with a little note in the upper left hand corner telling me the machine will not boot up.

By this, do you mean you get the shell prompt? Do you get white text on a black background? Does it look something like this?

sh-2.05a$

If so, the boot script is crashing during startup. Start up your Mac with the Command and V keys down. You will see a bunch of text fly by on the screen - write down whatever is still visible at the time it crashes, and post it here. We may be able to help.

davehill · Sep 30, 2003, 05:33 PM

Thanks very much for your reply.

The operating system is 10.2.4.

Here's the message I received in very small font in the upper lefthand corner of a 'gray' screen:

"bootr, unknown word
Failed to boot
Apple iMAC Open Firmware 3.0 fl0 built on 03/05/99 at 21:14:19
Copyright 1994-1998 Apple Computer, Inc.
All rights Reserved
ok
0)_"

Miraculouly, I solved the problem: On a lark, I typed in "boot," hit the return, and it booted up!

Originally posted by Uday's Carcass:
boot from a CD-ROM, be it 8/9.x or OS X. Run Disk Utility.

there is no 10.4. What specific version did you install?

CharlesS · Sep 30, 2003, 05:39 PM

Originally posted by davehill:
Thanks very much for your reply.

The operating system is 10.2.4.

Here's the message I received in very small font in the upper lefthand corner of a 'gray' screen:

"bootr, unknown word
Failed to boot
Apple iMAC Open Firmware 3.0 fl0 built on 03/05/99 at 21:14:19
Copyright 1994-1998 Apple Computer, Inc.
All rights Reserved
ok
0)_"

Miraculouly, I solved the problem: On a lark, I typed in "boot," hit the return, and it booted up!

Ah, so it was dumping you to the firmware screen... does it still do that, causing you to need to type 'mac-boot' every time, or is it booting normally now?

If the former, I would recommend resetting the NVRAM. You can do this by typing the following two commands at the Open Firmware screen:

reset-nvram
reset-all

davehill · Oct 3, 2003, 08:32 PM

CharlesS,

Sincere thanks for your assistance.

I did as you suggested and typed in:
"reset-nvram"
"reset-all"

The computer booted up and all appeared to be good, but when I shut down and then started it up again, I got the same screen as I had previously described (identical).

This time, however, instead of getting the machine to boot up when I typed in "boot" (return), I now have to type in "mac-boot" (return).

Any further thoughts.

Once again, I sincerely appreciate your counsel.

(I'm not sure what it is or where I find it - and I have not as yet even looked for it - but another forum patron ("Uday's Carcass," I believe) suggested I run "Disk Utility." Any thoughts on that? Thanks again.)

Dave Hill

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Ah, so it was dumping you to the firmware screen... does it still do that, causing you to need to type 'mac-boot' every time, or is it booting normally now?

If the former, I would recommend resetting the NVRAM. You can do this by typing the following two commands at the Open Firmware screen:

reset-nvram
reset-all

CharlesS · Oct 3, 2003, 08:37 PM

Hmm, try this:

setenv security-mode none
reset-all

davehill · Oct 6, 2003, 05:16 PM

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Hmm, try this:

setenv security-mode none
reset-all

CharleS,

Sorry to be so slow in responding.

(I can only do my diagnostics work on an intermittent basis.)

Anyway, I tried your suggestion and the machine did not respond by booting up. (It just sort of sat there.)

No harm done. "mac-boot" brought it around, but . . . I can't seem to get away from the need to "mac-boot" the machine to move it off the screen to which it opens - and which I have previously described to you.

Once again - many thanks for your counsel.

Dave Hill

CharlesS · Oct 6, 2003, 05:55 PM

Weird... other than the NVRAM being screwed and the security mode being set, I can't think of a good reason why your machine should be booting into Open Firmware every startup...

Anyone else have any ideas?

BigYellowMonkey · Oct 6, 2003, 10:04 PM

Yeah, I'm having a similar problem...
I installed OS X 10.2 (retail cd's) onto my beige g3/233, with a single 128MB stick of RAM. The install worked just fine, but after it reboots, it just sits at a white screen, not doing anything. And I've left it overnight. It just sits at the white screen. In the open firmware, i get some odd errors...
If I type "reset-nvram", it says "reset-nvram, unknown word".
If I type "boot", it says
"DEFAULT CATCH!, code=FFF00300 at %SRR0: FF80AE24 %SRR1: 0000B070"
If I type "setenv security-mode none", it says "invalid CONFIG name".
If I type "TTYA IO", then the monitor just goes into power-saving mode, like the signal to the vga-out has been cut off.

I'm at a loss as to what to do...

-Biggie!

davehill · Oct 10, 2003, 08:14 PM

CharlesS,

Once again, sorry to be so slow in responding to your efforts to assist me.

I really appreciate your help.

The good news is that I can still get the computer to boot up. "mac-boot" does work.

If you have any more thoughts, let me know.

Thanks again.

Dave Hill

Originally posted by CharlesS:
Weird... other than the NVRAM being screwed and the security mode being set, I can't think of a good reason why your machine should be booting into Open Firmware every startup...

Anyone else have any ideas?

Angus_D · Oct 11, 2003, 05:23 AM

Some old machines have a sucky version of Open Firmware which can't cope with reading past the first 8GB of the disk. The solution is to partition your drive so you have a boot partition contained entirely within the first 8GB of the disk, and install OS X onto that.

If your iMac is tray-loading, then this may be the issue you're encountering, and it's almost definitely the cause of the beige G3 problem.

davehill · Oct 16, 2003, 05:13 PM

Angus_D

Thanks for your help with this.

I appreciate you taking the time to respond.

Dave Hill

Originally posted by Angus_D:
Some old machines have a sucky version of Open Firmware which can't cope with reading past the first 8GB of the disk. The solution is to partition your drive so you have a boot partition contained entirely within the first 8GB of the disk, and install OS X onto that.

If your iMac is tray-loading, then this may be the issue you're encountering, and it's almost definitely the cause of the beige G3 problem.

Applefreak01 · Oct 17, 2003, 01:04 AM

I had a similar problem with a rev. A iMac with 384MB RAM installed. I could install 10.2 just fine but when the computer rebooted after installing, it just sat there and the screen would have vertial bars all over it. I took out the 128MB RAM (I had a hunch it was this module OS 9 would crash a lot more than it should so I figured the RAM went bad). Sure enough now 10.2 boots and works just fine.

davehill · Oct 22, 2003, 12:51 PM

Thanks.

Originally posted by Applefreak01:
I had a similar problem with a rev. A iMac with 384MB RAM installed. I could install 10.2 just fine but when the computer rebooted after installing, it just sat there and the screen would have vertial bars all over it. I took out the 128MB RAM (I had a hunch it was this module OS 9 would crash a lot more than it should so I figured the RAM went bad). Sure enough now 10.2 boots and works just fine.