need help with old g3

i recently acquired an old g3 power mac 7600 and trying to install ubuntu. my problem is i cannot get the darn thing to boot from the cd drive...i have tried holding the c key while powering on and holding apple, option, shift, del to no effect. this is my first mac, i don't know alot about them. if anyone has any suggestions it would be appreciated.

 

Holding the "C" key is the right thing to do. You might have a drive that's starting to go south as well. I've replaced tons of these drives over the years. If the drive is okay, then I would expect that your trying to boot off a CD that will not support this machine. Use the disk that come with it (if you have it as a test) or use a "Retail" copy of OS 7.6, 8, or 9. That should boot it. This machine needs a specific system to boot, and you can't take a start up disk from just any old Mac and boot just any old machine with it. Also a 7600 is not a G3, it's a PowerPC 604, so using a disk for a G3 won't work. This machine came with 7.5.5, which is cool, because at one point (maybe still) you could download a full working copy of 7.5.5 the full version from Apple's website (the only OS in history that you could do that with). Also this machine won't run past Apple's system 9.1.

Dana
MacMedics

 

thank you for your help. i did some research on this machine, and the processor is an aftermarket 550mhz, the ram was upgraded to 512mb, video card was upgraded to a rage 128, this is a really fast dinosaur. i was hoping to upgrade this to os x, but i realize now that is impossible. i downloaded 7.5 from apples website, plus the boot disk, decompressed it on my pc with aladdin, and wrote it to a cd (just the boot disk) with winimage to no effect. i think i'm ready to call it quits and buy a more modern mac, one that can run os x so i can try it out. i have never owned a mac b4, and wish to compare it to my pcs. thanks again for your help