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leongwt · Sep 26, 2002, 10:16 PM

not sure if this is the correct tread but i am hoping that someone can help me out. this is my story.

i have a beige G3-233, and it was running on OS9.0.4 happily. a little problem i have is the built-in ethernet port is not working. a few days ago, i bought a SMC card, plugged it in and it was working fine. i would have been a happy owner except that my backside was feeling a bit itchy, so i decided that i want to re-partition my HDD.

i sticked my OS9.0.4 installation CD into my G3, re-partitioned my HDD, reinstalled the OS, and all hell broke loose. upon restarting, i got this string of repeating message 'no bootable HFS partition', before the Mac OS logo comes up. after a while, the machine will boot. the problem is that it is running at about 30% of the original speed. the whole booting up process works fine when i boot up from the CD.

i then sticked in my OS8.0 CD, re-initialised my HDD, installed OS8, and everything works fine. i then tried to upgrade to OS9. the same problem again.

i then re-initialised my HDD, reinstalled OS8, but this time round i got this string of repeating 'can't open'.

i tried to format my HDD into 'Mac OS standard' as well as 'Mac OS extended', i even tried low-level formatting, but it doesn't work. i pulled out the ethernet card that i added in, didn't work either.

Can someone enlighten me?

tooki · Sep 27, 2002, 12:27 PM

Do a PRAM reset.

tooki

Deal · Sep 27, 2002, 11:55 PM

Zap the Cuda chip.

Near the Battery on the motherboard is a little black button. Actually, on that model I think it's hard to see because it's kind of under the processor toward the case slots.

You have to hold in that button and count to 10. You should have a nice indentation on your finger now.

Then boot to the CD, partition, format, install, etc...

leongwt · Sep 29, 2002, 01:20 AM

Thanks for the advice guys. only had time to try thr PRAM reset, but not the cuda chip reset.

resetting the PRAM solved the 'no bootable HFS partition' and the 'can't open' error message issue. however, the system is still very very slow (about 30% of original speed). i will try to reset the cuda chip as described and report back.

once again, thanks for the advice.

leongwt · Oct 2, 2002, 12:10 PM

i am now ready to zap the cuda chip, but just 1 question (might be a stupid question to the techies) before that.

do i disconnect the power supply before doing that? instead of pressing the button, will removing the battery on the motherboard do the trick as well?

Xaositect · Oct 2, 2002, 12:28 PM

Yes, unplug the machine before resetting the cuda chip.

Yes, you can pull the battery (while unplugged), wait 10 minutes, put battery back in (watch polarity), push the cuda button once, briefly, for a "full logic board reset".

If that doesn't fix it, try reseating the media personality card and the ROM SIMM.

Good luck!

leongwt · Oct 6, 2002, 10:03 PM

Have done a 'full logic board reset' as described, but doesn't seem to fix the problem.

Now I am thinking it could be the HDD that's screwing things up because the systems runs normally when I boot up from CD, but is extremely slow when I boot up from HDD. I can hear the normal HDD noise the it is crawling along. Tried plugging the HDD into my G4, it my G4 could not detect it at all.

Will change the HDD and report back.

reader50 · Oct 9, 2002, 09:26 PM

Some older G3's were known to have a problem booting into OS X if the boot partition was not fully contained within the first 8 GB of the drive. This came up during the OSX Public Beta. I do not recall if it affected OS 9 installs. The current OS 9 at the time was either 9.0.4 or 9.1

Try repartitioning again, and set the first partition to 8 GB or smaller. Install the OS, then try booting, PRAM resets, etc.

leongwt · Oct 15, 2002, 08:25 AM

Bought a new HDD over the weekend, plugged it in and now the system flies (when running OS9 that is). So my conclusion is the old HDD was screwing me up.

Now I have problem booting up in OSX. I can see that the poor G3 is trying to search for something when I tried to boot up in OSX 10.4. After a while, it will give up the search and boot up OK. However, if I tried OSX10.1, it will just keep on searching.

My HDD partition is 5Gb (OS9), 5Gb (OSX) and 10Gb (data).