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OS 9 iMac: How do i wipe drive without boot disc?

M

marybeth99

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 25, 2006
4
0
Hi,

I have an old iMac that I want to donate, but want to wipe my files from it before I do. I don't have the original OS 9 system discs.

Any suggestions on where to get them, or an alternate solution for wiping the drive?

If I download from here to my iBook:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75103

And then burn a disc - can I use THAT as a startup disc for the old iMac?

Thanks!
/mb
 
Did you ever update the firmware? (If you had to.) You can just use an OS X disc. You boot off of it and run Disk Utility. You DON'T need to install OS X.
 
Thanks for responding. I not sure what you mean by updating the firmware.

I tried both OSX discs, but my iMac is not recognizing them, and asks if I want to initialize the disk.

I inserted these disks while the iMac was running, but I did not try to restart from the disk directly.

Any ideas? Thanks much.
 
marybeth99 said:
Thanks for responding. I not sure what you mean by updating the firmware.

I tried both OSX discs, but my iMac is not recognizing them, and asks if I want to initialize the disk.

I inserted these disks while the iMac was running, but I did not try to restart from the disk directly.

Any ideas? Thanks much.
Click to expand...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93772

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86117

Which old iMac do you have? It sounds like a G3. Then again there are a lot of those.
 
Hmm. My firmware was already up-to-date.

iBook G4 Mac OS X Install Disc is still unreadable.

Perhaps because it is meant to be read on an iBook?

What about another utility/download that will allow me to wipe the drive?

Or should I just post on craigslist for an OS 9 System Disc? <boo>

Thx/mb
 
marybeth99 said:
Hmm. My firmware was already up-to-date.

iBook G4 Mac OS X Install Disc is still unreadable.

Perhaps because it is meant to be read on an iBook?

What about another utility/download that will allow me to wipe the drive?

Or should I just post on craigslist for an OS 9 System Disc? <boo>

Thx/mb
Click to expand...
Yeah, your iBook disc is tied to your iBook. I thought you had a full version installer.
 
Eidorian said:
How will that help with a 266 MHz iMac G3? :D
Click to expand...

That wouldn't happen to be the last iMac made without Firewire?

Of course, what I really meant was, if he has a Firewire enclosure, he could pull the drive from the iMac and install it in the enclosure, and wipe it from his PowerBook.

Right. That's what I meant. Whew. Almost embarrassed myself there. ;)
 
IJ Reilly said:
That wouldn't happen to be the last iMac made without Firewire?

Of course, what I really meant was, if he has a Firewire enclosure, he could pull the drive from the iMac and install it in the enclosure, and wipe it from his PowerBook.

Right. That's what I meant. Whew. Almost embarrassed myself there. ;)
Click to expand...
I believe the 350 MHz iMac was the last one without FireWire. So the 266 MHz model is out of the question. Otherwise I knew what you were planning. :p
 
I believe the iBook G4 restore is on DVD and that iMac only has a CDROM Drive in it. Like others said, it wouldn't work anyways as that will ONLY work on an iBook G4.
 
Eidorian said:
I believe the 350 MHz iMac was the last one without FireWire. So the 266 MHz model is out of the question. Otherwise I knew what you were planning. :p
Click to expand...

Actually, it was the 333 Mhz (rev B) version of the "flavored" iMacs. The first model with Firewire was the slot-loading drive version, starting at 350 Mhz.

Glad we got that straightened out!
 
IJ Reilly said:
Actually, it was the 333 Mhz (rev B) version of the "flavored" iMacs. The first model with Firewire was the slot-loading drive version, starting at 350 Mhz.

Glad we got that straightened out!
Click to expand...

Actually, you're wrong again, the clear colored translucent iMac in the 5 flavors (slot loading) had a cheap model that DID NOT have FireWire in it, known as the iMac. The other models were known as iMac DV's, which the DV signified that it came with FireWire.

The 333 MHz G3 iMac models (Five Flavors) did NOT have FW in them either. They were still tray loading iMacs and only had USB 1.1 I/O ports.

Now we have it straightened out the correct way...
 
IJ Reilly said:
According to Apple, the slot-loading iMacs supported FireWire Target Disk Mode:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583

The slot-loaders started at 350 Mhz. But then, according to Mactracker, the FireWire ports weren't included in the 350 Mhz model. So Apple has created this confusion by being unclear on their support page.
Click to expand...
Yeah, I learned that the 350 MHz models didn't have FireWire from this thread.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/187134/
 
Now we just need to figure out what to do with this precious nugget of Mac knowledge. ;)

It doesn't help our original questioner, that's for sure. Sorry for the thread drift!
 
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