Trying to get a orginal (bondi) iMac to boot..

[Horatio™]

Hello all, first sorry if this is in the wrong forum, but this is the closest I could see to vintage troubleshooting. I have an original bondi blue iMac that starts off the CD perfectly, but refuses to boot of the HD, it just sits there flashing a system icon/question mark. Now here's where it gets odd... If I stick the CD in and let it run long enough so that it stops flashing a question mark, and has a solid sys icon and then kick the CD out, it immediatly boots off the HD, no problem... I've tried just about everything I can think of, and alot of what other people have thought of... (http://www.macaddict.com/forums/topic/73994) but to no avail... any ideas?

 

[840quadra]

Hello all, first sorry if this is in the wrong forum, but this is the closest I could see to vintage troubleshooting. I have an original bondi blue iMac that starts off the CD perfectly, but refuses to boot of the HD, it just sits there flashing a system icon/question mark. Now here's where it gets odd... If I stick the CD in and let it run long enough so that it stops flashing a question mark, and has a solid sys icon and then kick the CD out, it immediatly boots off the HD, no problem... I've tried just about everything I can think of, and alot of what other people have thought of... (http://www.macaddict.com/forums/topic/73994) but to no avail... any ideas?

The system may have the Default startup disk set incorrectly. But it should still boot (after a delay) from your HDD.

Try this,
Once you are in the OS, check to see what the default "Startup disk" is set to.

Is this OS 9 or OS X ?

Either way startup disk is going to be located in the Control panels, or System preferences.

 

[Horatio™]

I'll check that out right now, and I'm running OS 8.6 (figured thats what they shipped with (er.. shipped with 8.5 actually) so why not give it a shot), though I've had considerable experience with both.

 

[Horatio™]

Well it seems something has gone nutty... now I can't do anything except boot off of the CD

 

[840quadra]

Well it seems something has gone nutty... now I can't do anything except boot off of the CD

It may be time to reload the OS.

Do you see a "Blessed" System folder when you boot from the CD? .

This will be a System folder with the Smiling Macintosh logo, and inside that, you should also see a finder icon with the smiling Macintosh logo.