[Bald Melon]

I have an old iMac G3 (Lime) that won't start up. Here's the story. Last year, I replaced the hard drive so I could upgrade from OS 8.6 to Jaguar. Everything worked fine for a couple of weeks. Then something went wrong and it stopped starting. Since I also had a new G5, I didn't cry over it too much. But I had a couple of Mac guru friends have a look and they determined that my problem was the power supply. It was a small investment, so I replaced that, too.
But I just tried starting up again and got the same symptoms: 1. Standard Chime. 2. Small icon of a folder with a question mark flashes. 3. Small icon of a regular folder flashes. 4. Light gray screen with a dark grey Apple logo appears, and stays that way indefinitely.
I have tried force restarting (by sticking a paper clip in the restart hole in the side) while holding down every key (and combinations thereof) imaginable to no avail. I would greatly appreciate any insight anyone could give.

[DoorGah]

Hello, Wow, where to start. I guess first question is how big of HD you put in; is it over 130GB? Did you need, do any firmware updates? Did you/have you replaced the battery? And... have you tried Zapping (resetting) the parameter RAM? Hold down Command-Option keys and letters P and R after start up sound... keep holding until it sounds or flickers 2-3 times, then let go. Answer those and more to follow. dp

[Bald Melon]

Originally Posted by DoorGah

Hello, Wow, where to start. I guess first question is how big of HD you put in; is it over 130GB? Did you need, do any firmware updates? Did you/have you replaced the battery? And... have you tried Zapping (resetting) the parameter RAM? Hold down Command-Option keys and letters P and R after start up sound... keep holding until it sounds or flickers 2-3 times, then let go. Answer those and more to follow. dp

Thanx for getting back to me so quickly.
I put in a 40GB drive (Hope that was large enough) - A Maxtor drive 7200 rpm Ultra ATA/133.
No, I didn't replace the battery.
Nope, no firmware either.
Yes, I have tried resetting the P-RAM by holding down the Command, Option,P & R keys.

[D0C_Hol1d@y]

That means It doesn't know where the start up volume is on the hard drive. You have to boot the machine with a start up CD. The OS X install disc will work. Once it boots up into the install go into the apple menu and select the system preferences and choose start-up disk. A window will open you will see all the OS folders in that window click once on the OSX folder and restart your machine. That should take care of it.

[Bald Melon]

Well, I followed your advice, and things were going swimmingly. Old Smokey fired up using the Jaguar installation disk. Unfortunately, when I tried to re-install, I got a warning that I didn't have free memory in the right part of the hard drive. So after I used the disk utility to check and repair the drive, I thought (maybe naively) that I should erase the hard drive and/or partition it, since these were among the choices left.
That was the straw that broke the iMac's back. When attempting the partition, it shut off and would not respond to the power switch (nor to any amount of pleading and swearing) at all.
I assume that I knocked out the power supply again. Maybe I have a bad mother board. Either way, I thought it best not to invest any more time or money into what had been a faithful machine. Alas, our Lime companion that had been relegated to the kids' computer had finally bitten the dust. So I played a mournful rendition of "Taps" in Garage Band and went out and bought a new Mac Mini. It came with iLife... score!
So thanx just the same everybody. Good advice, bad components.

[remember_1988]

Hello Bald Melon,

I was also in a similar pickle, and have been searching a solution. It may be as simple as your mac dying of old age or as extreme as your ATA being corrupt. You are running Jaguar? That may be the problem. Your iMac was only made to support X.1. Your processor may not be able to understand the commands it's recieving. Have you taken it to the Apple Store yet? A Mac super may be able to bring your mac back to working order. Even worse, your processor may be damaged due to some other problem that you had no control over. I would start by bringing it to the Apple Store and getting a pro to get a look at it.

Yours,

remember_1988