Blueberry G3 Imac boot-black rectangle middle of screen

[bobcaryh]

Hi all
I recently got an old G3 iMac. When it boots I get the chime, then see an apple, then the middle of the screen is covered with a black rectangle. Almost like a message window that never showed or something. Any idea what it could be? I have tried booting from the drive, also holding C and booting from a install CD and get the same thing. Thanks in advance!

 

[MacTech68]

Sounds like a kernel panic that never has time to draw correctly.

Could be any number of things, but bad RAM could be a cause. Try swapping and/or re-seating the RAM.

 

[bobcaryh]

Thanks for the idea! I ordered a new pram battery as well to be safe.

 

[MBAir2010]

I gave away a imac g4 that just needed a new battery, the screen was grey with lines.

 

[bobcaryh]

Sorry duplicate post

 

[bobcaryh]

Checked the pram battery and has 0.1 bolts. Pulled the main ram chip and now it boots to the folder with a question mark so that’s good at least. Looks like that ram may have been bad. It’s the one under the metal cage. I left the other one in.

 

[MacTech68]

That sounds like it's no longer booting from the hard drive or CD.

It's unlikely to kernel panic if it's not booting a system.

 

[bobcaryh]

I’m going to download a fresh copy of 9.2 and try to boot off of that. The guy I got it from said he was trying to install panther from cd when it rebooted with the black rectangle. I think he just hosed the system or the hard drive happened to go bad. Hopefully I can get it to boot from cd. You just hold down c on boot right?

 

[MacTech68]

Yup - hold down c

 

[bobcaryh]

Either holding c doesn’t work or the cd drive is bad. I burned a copy of 9.2.2 and it won’t load off the cd. Just get the question mark folder icon

 

[MacTech68]

Do you have access to an ATAPI (IDE) CD ROM Drive ? A full size one might also work in place of the Hard Drive.

Failure of the CD Drives is pretty common.

Without other hardware, it's pretty difficult to diagnose further.

 

[bobcaryh]

Do you have access to an ATAPI (IDE) CD ROM Drive ? A full size one might also work in place of the Hard Drive.

Failure of the CD Drives is pretty common.

Without other hardware, it's pretty difficult to diagnose further.

No I wish I did.
Is there a way to install an os on the hard drive from another mac I have? Then just put it back in the iMac

 

[MacTech68]

What System version is on the other Mac? I'm not certain if later OSX Finder versions will bless a 'Classic' MacOS System Folder (critical for booting).

The hard drive is also ATA/PATA/IDE

You may want to try looking at the lens on the CD Drive - I'm assuming this is a tray-loading drive (like a PC laptop).

Also verifying your USB keyboard is working might help.

Pics anytime could/might be helpful too.

 

[bobcaryh]

Yeah I’ve got no ide cd rom. I ordered a new hard drive for it. Cleaned the lens on the cd rom to no avail. I can hear it moving around just not sure why it’s not reading. I ordered a 9.2.2 apple cd from eBay hoping maybe the burn copy I made was bad but the mac garden website said it was bootable.

I sense maybe it is going to become an aquarium lol

 

[MacTech68]

I sense maybe it is going to become an aquarium lol

Entirely up to you. Everything is fixable, it just depends on how much time, effort and money you want to throw at it

 

[bobcaryh]

Entirely up to you. Everything is fixable, it just depends on how much time, effort and money you want to throw at it

I just can’t figure why holding down alt on boot doesn’t give me the boot menu or an error message or something.

 

[MacTech68]

I just can’t figure why holding down alt on boot doesn’t give me the boot menu or an error message or something.

"System Picker" wasn't in Open Firmware until around v2.8.x on the Slot-Load iMacs IIRC

 

[bobcaryh]

Still toying around with it. Got new ram. Brand new. Put it in and I’m back to it booting to the black rectangle on the screen. Without the ram in there I get the folder with question mark. I’m putting the ram into the slot with the small metal cage you need to remove.

 

[MacTech68]

Try holding down the 'command' and 's' keys on a cold bootup. Keep holding them down until you see white text on a black background.

At the prompt, type

fsck -fy

and hit the enter/return key

what is the result ?

 

[bobcaryh]

I get this and it stops

 

[bobcaryh]

After this I removed the ram again. Ctrl s on cold boot does nothing. It goes to the folder question mark again.

 

[MacTech68]

There is RAM on the underside of the CPU card.

See page 143 here:

https://tim.id.au/laptops/apple/imac/imac.pdf

Minimum RAM for boot is 256MB - which is probably why it won't try booting when you remove the RAM

Darwin 8.11.0 is MacOS 10.4.11

Technically, 10.4 is NOT supported (or installable) on a G3 Tray Loading iMac.

 

[bobcaryh]

Yeah I didn’t know there was a minimum. I’ll grab some more memory and try it out again lol

 

[bobcaryh]

Yeah I didn’t know there was a minimum. The ram it came with was just booting to the black rectangle screen.

 

[bobcaryh]

Just tried with the supplied ram which was 256 total and I get that text screen above with ctrl s. Just says release ppc panic.