iBook G3 Corrupted OS X

[Panpooper]

I have an iBook G3 with firewire and that is about all I can tell you. When I bought it off of ebay it came running Mac OS 9.2. Stupid me decided that I should take a copy of Mac OS X off of an iMac G3 and copy that to the HDD of the iBook. I then attempted to boot off of the OS X folder I put on my HDD. The system immediately kernel panicked. Both OS 9 and OS X are on the same partition so i need to somehow set OS 9 as the startup disk. I have looked at numerous other forums (I have been trying to fox this for about a year now) and found commands for doing this in Open Firmware. The command was:

boot hd:\wherever your installation is\

It did start booting OS 9 but just hung there and never fully booted.

Is there any way to delete something off of the HDD with open firmware? If I could delete the OS X folder that should solve my problem. Another possible fix would be force booting into OS 9. How would you do this?

I have tried resetting the nvram, pram, holding option on startup, and holding 9 on startup.

I do not own the restore CD and am afraid to buy them because I do not know which ones I need. Are they the orange ones? Could somebody link them please? I do not own any other mac with a cd burner so I have to use Windows to burn cd's. I found this program called TransMac which let me make a bootable disc for my iMac G3. I tried to make an OS 9 disc but the iBook refused to boot it.

Any suggestions are welcome!

Thanks in advanced!

 

[MacCubed]

I have an iBook G3 with firewire and that is about all I can tell you. When I bought it off of ebay it came running Mac OS 9.2. Stupid me decided that I should take a copy of Mac OS X off of an iMac G3 and copy that to the HDD of the iBook. I then attempted to boot off of the OS X folder I put on my HDD. The system immediately kernel panicked. Both OS 9 and OS X are on the same partition so i need to somehow set OS 9 as the startup disk. I have looked at numerous other forums (I have been trying to fox this for about a year now) and found commands for doing this in Open Firmware. The command was:

boot hd:\wherever your installation is\

It did start booting OS 9 but just hung there and never fully booted.

Is there any way to delete something off of the HDD with open firmware? If I could delete the OS X folder that should solve my problem. Another possible fix would be force booting into OS 9. How would you do this?

I have tried resetting the nvram, pram, holding option on startup, and holding 9 on startup.

I do not own the restore CD and am afraid to buy them because I do not know which ones I need. Are they the orange ones? Could somebody link them please? I do not own any other mac with a cd burner so I have to use Windows to burn cd's. I found this program called TransMac which let me make a bootable disc for my iMac G3. I tried to make an OS 9 disc but the iBook refused to boot it.

Any suggestions are welcome!

Thanks in advanced!

Use an OS X installer CD and select the OS 9 folder as the boot drive

 

[Orizence]

Yeah, you should just be able to change the startup disk using any old OS X cd.

Assuming you can do that using 10.2, you can find the ISO anywhere on the internet as by now its considered abandonware

 

[redhatcode29]

Knock youself out http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-osx-mac-os-10-ppc
I am sure u can get acess to Mac at a Cc or so. Or just restore the OS to your firewire drive and boot from it as if it was your install disc.

 

[weckart]

Or put your iBook in Target Disk Mode, mount the HD on any other Mac, unhide the hidden files and just delete all of the OSX files.

 

[Panpooper]

Thank you for all of the responses!

I have tried creating an OS 9, 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4 disc and the iBook will not boot any of them. I have tried holding C at startup and holding option. When using C the computer just boots into corrupted OS X. When using the option key, the only option I get is the internal HDD.

 

[MacCubed]

Do you have an iMac with FireWire? If so, do you have a FireWire cable?

 

[Panpooper]

Do you have an iMac with FireWire? If so, do you have a FireWire cable?

I do have an iMac with firewire but do not own a cable. I could easily buy one but could I fix it with just the firewire cable? I do not need any discs? I know what target disc mode is but I do not know how it works.

Thanks for the help!

 

[headsh0t95]

Thank you for all of the responses!

I have tried creating an OS 9, 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4 disc and the iBook will not boot any of them. I have tried holding C at startup and holding option. When using C the computer just boots into corrupted OS X. When using the option key, the only option I get is the internal HDD.

Well then your optical drive is malfunctioning. TDM might fix it but if OS 9 is corrupted as well you'll have to put a new System Folder on the drive and make it somehow bootable without using disk

 

[MacCubed]

I do have an iMac with firewire but do not own a cable. I could easily buy one but could I fix it with just the firewire cable? I do not need any discs? I know what target disc mode is but I do not know how it works.

Thanks for the help!

Grab a firewire cable, it will allow you to access the contents of the iBook's hard drive on your iMac. There is a universal, drag-and-drop OS9 installer on the Macintosh Garden. Download this, and after erasing the contents of the iBook's HDD, drag it onto the hard drive. Make sure when you erase you check "Install OS9 Drivers"

 

[Panpooper]

Grab a firewire cable, it will allow you to access the contents of the iBook's hard drive on your iMac. There is a universal, drag-and-drop OS9 installer on the Macintosh Garden. Download this, and after erasing the contents of the iBook's HDD, drag it onto the hard drive. Make sure when you erase you check "Install OS9 Drivers"

Could I just delete the OS X system folder? Then I do not lose the OS 9 install and I do not have to download any OS on there. If I did erase the HDD would I use disk utility on the iMac?

 

[MacCubed]

Could I just delete the OS X system folder? Then I do not lose the OS 9 install and I do not have to download any OS on there. If I did erase the HDD would I use disk utility on the iMac?

I recommend erasing the disk as it will be a fresh start and should fix problems. You would restore in Disk Utility on the iMac and select the FireWire Disk

 

[weckart]

Just erasing the OSX files works too. I did that with a faulty installation. Try that first if you don't want to lose any data. Remember to unhide hidden files first as the key OSX bootfiles are hidden in the Finder.