I recently came across an old 500 G3 ibook and am having a bit of a problem with it. everytime i turn it on, a folder appears with a flashing question mark. obviously i need to reinstall whichever mac OS, but will the hard drive still be good? my friend told me about being able to boot and install a mac os from a pb to another mac. they were connected with a standard 4 pin firewire he claims. has anyone heard about this? whats the fastest way to get this ibook up and running
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help with old G3 ibook
- Thread starter jamesi
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You will need some sort of Mac OS install disk in order to install the operating system on the hard drive. A blinking folder simply means no operating system was found and doesn't necessarily mean the hard drive is bad. Stick the install CD into the iBook's CD drive to boot from the CD.
The 500 mhz iBook is compatible with all versions of Mac OS X as well as OS 9.
This is called Firewire target disk mode. This allows you to connect two computers together, one of which is recognized as an external hard drive to the other. The computer that is being used as an external drive is said to be in target disk mode, and should display a blue screen with the Firewire logo bouncing about.
The 500 mhz iBook is compatible with all versions of Mac OS X as well as OS 9.
This is called Firewire target disk mode. This allows you to connect two computers together, one of which is recognized as an external hard drive to the other. The computer that is being used as an external drive is said to be in target disk mode, and should display a blue screen with the Firewire logo bouncing about.
Blue? I've always gotten a black screen with the FW symbol...
I've had mixed luck with formatting via Firewire. If you're doing it because the install discs you have won't work with the ibook, chances are you still won't be able to format the laptop (those later OS discs are tricky). If it's Panther or older OSX, the disc should work directly. If it's hardware specific OS9 or Tiger, then it won't.
I've had mixed luck with formatting via Firewire. If you're doing it because the install discs you have won't work with the ibook, chances are you still won't be able to format the laptop (those later OS discs are tricky). If it's Panther or older OSX, the disc should work directly. If it's hardware specific OS9 or Tiger, then it won't.