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Ok, I found a G3 imac in someone's trash. (Somebody died and the family just tossed everything in the house.)
Problem is it won't start up. I've been to apple's forums and looked around other places, talked to friends who use (and sell) macs, haven't gotten all the answers yet.
I also found I can't get any support from Apple unless I spend money (for them to likely tell me to spend more money taking it to an authorized repair place, buying software, etc) or fax them a proof of purchase for chat support.. which conveniently wasn't in the trash with the system.
It's a "ruby" model slot-loading crt display type thing. When I turn it on, I get the nefarious blinking question mark deal. A friend gave me a copy of the "panther" version of OS X install discs, which will actually boot and go right into install, but then I get a message that says I need to update the firmware. I've figured out how I could do that, but problem is I need to get it to boot somehow...
From within the OS X install program, I was able to access a disk utility thing that shows that there's an 80GB drive on it, which seemingly doesn't have any horrible errors on it. There's actually about 5GB worth of files still on it, too. It also said it has OS 9.1 installed on it.
I've obtained disc images of install and restore software that were supposedly ripped from OS 9 discs for G3's, tried burning them a few different ways on my pc to be mac-compatible as best as I could. (Tried mounting the images to a virtual drive using Alcohol 120%, then copying in Nero, also tried converting them to .bin and .cue files with ISObuster, and again burning in Nero) It didn't work. Also tried making a disc from a .dmg file I got for OS 9.2.2, but again, no go.
I even got ahold of an iBook restore disc that supposedly has OS 9 on it, but it's not even recognized when I stick it in...
The only thing that works at all is the OS X install disc, which won't install..
Can anyone give me advice on what to do, or how to burn a bootable disc using a pc, and maybe the files I already have? I'd like to see what I can do with this system and get it working, maybe even donate it to a friend or someone needy who'd like to learn about computers if I don't have a use for it.
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