[old jiggs]

Most of the time I get the flashing question mark. It just started this about four days ago. Usually after it sits for a while it will start okay but still rejects all disks. I got this old Mac a few weeks ago for my wife to use in the kitchen but its not much help right now. What do you all think...is the cd drive shot? I'm pretty leery about trying to replace it myself and I'm afraid it would be cost prohibitive to have a shop do it. Hate to scrap it. Any good advice?

[Headrush]

Originally Posted by old jiggs

Most of the time I get the flashing question mark. It just started this about four days ago. Usually after it sits for a while it will start okay but still rejects all disks. I got this old Mac a few weeks ago for my wife to use in the kitchen but its not much help right now. What do you all think...is the cd drive shot? I'm pretty leery about trying to replace it myself and I'm afraid it would be cost prohibitive to have a shop do it. Hate to scrap it. Any good advice?

Which Mac model?
For most models replacing the drive is fairly painless.

Is this machine running OS 9 or OS X?

Could be as simple as resetting PRAM, replacing motherboard battery, setting startup disk, but we need more info first please.

[old jiggs]

The battery is dead. I didn't know that would make so much difference. Stupid of me. I will replace the battery first and see how that goes.....probably be Saturday before I can get to it. Thanks so much for your help.

Jiggs

[old jiggs]

I replaced the battery and it starts up okay now but it still rejects disks. I was wondering, can I just use an external usb cd-rom? Can it be used without installing anything--since it won't accept any kind of a disk?

[Serge_N_Gin]

old jiggs,

As Headrush has already stated ^, unless important information about your Mac is forthcoming, it's very difficult to give any real advice ...

[old jiggs]

Originally Posted by Serge_N_Gin

old jiggs,

As Headrush has already stated ^, unless important information about your Mac is forthcoming, it's very difficult to give any real advice ...

Sorry, its a PowerPC G3 350 mhz, imac, system 9.2.2 64 mb memory