G4/533 will not boot into OS 9!! (so can't do firmware update)

[spinne1]

Hello, I have here a Powermac G4/533 that I need to update the firmware on but it won't boot into OS 9. I spent about four hours reading all the information I could using Google searching under various terms related to my issue, but no one had a workable solution.

Clues:

I have Tech Tool Pro and found that my machine was manufactured in June of 2001 as a G4/733?!

I have a single RAM stick of 256 mb (Samsung) which seems to work fine and tests out as fine.

I have three hard drives hooked up, two IDE as slaves (one on an Acard PCI 66 controller card) which both have OS 10.3.9 on and both boot fine, and one IDE as master. The IDE master HD I wiped in Disk Utility, made sure to check that OS 9 drivers were installed in the reformat, and made a single partition out of it (OS 9 drivers are installed on all my partitions). On this drive I installed a fresh copy of OS 9 from a retail OS 9.1 install CD (I had to run it by booting into OS X, running classic, and running the installer from there--the OS 9 CD will not boot!). After installing, I installed both the 9.2.1 and 9.2.2 updates found on Apple's website. After this I selected the OS 9 hard drive as my startup disk and restarted---into OS X! I then tried holding the option key at startup--no OS 9 disk available to choose! I then tried holding the "D" key down to force an OS 9 reboot--didn't work. I then tried to rebless the OS 9 system folder by using terminal and following some commands given on some websites to accomblish such a reblessing (sudo bless -folder9 /Volumes/*my hard drive name*/'System Folder' -label *my hard drive name* -bootBlocks) but it did not work. I tried open firmware booting by following some instructions, but my HD came up as: hd:,\\txbi or something like that, which did not leave me a choice as what to change to force an OS 9 reboot.

I found on Apple's website that the G4/533 must have a boot ROM version of 6.7.1 for OS 9 for it to work, but I can't find the boot ROM to check it to see what my OS 9 hard drive has.

I need to update the firmware because I want to purchase a processor upgrade and it is necessary to first update the firmware.

Anyone know what I can do?

 

[spinne1]

I FINALLY got it to work by reinstalling OS 9.1, then 9.2.1, then 9.2.2 onto the master IDE hard drive, copying all said files onto a folder on a OS X hard drive, going to Disk Utility, reformatting the OS 9 hard drive again, but this time with "Mac OS Extended" INSTEAD of "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)," then copying the contents of the folder on OS X back onto the OS 9 drive and then going to Startup Disk and choosing the OS 9 hard drive. It BOOTED INTO OS 9!!

But sadly, it said upon booting "a self-memory test was failed...see a technician" or something like that.

I ran the 4.2.8 firmware updater, followed the directions carefully (push the programmer button etc etc) but it has not so far worked!

What a crappy process.

EDIT: an hour or two later I finally got the firmware to update!!!!!!!!!!!! It was completely an accident and should not have worked. After pushing the programmer button, it never gave me any tone, but the light would flash on and off quickly after 5 seconds or so. If I held the button down, eventually I would get the Open Firmware command line, where a "mac-boot" would take me back to OS 9 with no firmware update. I eventually gave up and went to the Startup Disk control panel, selected one of my OS X disks to boot from, then closed it. I then went back to the Firmware Update installer, ran it which shut the computer down, I hit the programmer button, which still made no sound, but I decided to let go of it just after the flashing power light (which I had also tried other times before that) and this time it went to a gray screen with a darker grey progress bar at the bottom. At the end, it booted into OS X and the firmware is now at 4.2.8!!!! Yessssssssssssssssssssss.