I've bought an old iMac G3 (333MHz, 128MB RAM), no firewire, no DVD, no CD burning. Since it doesn't support Airport, I've found and bought an old USB WiFi adapter, but still it only has drivers for OS X 10.3 while I have 10.1 at the moment. I've replaced hard drive for 120GB one and was able to reinstall the original OS 8.5, then 9.2.2 and finally OS X 10.1. I've checked the firmware update and it's up to date, the hard drive is also fine. Actually everything works until it comes to 10.3 install.
I wanted to buy the original retail OS X Panther, but couldn't find it in Moscow (Russia). I've searched on Ebay and Amazon but the prices (including shipping to my destination) were unacceptable — I can't afford to pay $200+ for a hopelessly outdated OS... So I had no option rather then downloading OS from the internet. I've downloaded several versions, burned install discs on my MacBook Pro under OS X 10.11 with Toast Titanium. But most of the CDs didn't boot and iMac doesn't even read them. The one set (3 install CDs) seemed fine, it boots and verifies the CD (okay), than installation begins, but it always gets stuck at 76%, computer gets unresponsive. And if I try the install once again right after it failed, the disc doesn't boot and gets stuck at white screen or white screen with logo. After some time switched off it works again. Some discs are read on MacBook, but won't read on iMac. And also when I tried to verify the install CD with Disk Utility it reported "Error: No valid packages (-9997)". I can't understand whether my install CD is bad (but how the install verifies it normally than?), or iMac optical drive? Or both? I've tried to find out what this error on CD could mean, but couldn't find anything. I've been struggling with this iMac for almost 3 weeks and have spent more money, than the computer itself did cost. This is especially hard because I live in Russia and it's barely possible to find the spare parts for the old Apple computers and shipping from abroad became too expansive, while I've bought this computer only because it's fun and interesting thing for me, but I'm not going to work on it, cause I have the modern MacBook, so I didn't plan to spend really lot of money for simply having this toy-like computer working. Any help is much appreciated! -- You received this message because you are a member of the iMac Group, a group for those using Apple iMacs and eMacs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/imac/list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To leave this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/imaclist --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "iMac Group" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
