G4 Quicksilver not booting

[OhDigital]

I picked up a G4 Quicksilver to run OS9. It came with original CDs including the OS9.2.1 and OSX Upgrade, plus the Hardware Test, and install discs. Even still had the blank discs and stickers. They had it running at some point with a Adaptec SCSI card and Sonnet SATA card with two additional HDDs installed. I removed the cards and extra drives. I've reset PRAM and tried booting off just the HDD that it came with (factory) and it just spins and spins on the grey OSX style boot screen, never gets to the OS. The HDD makes a "wink" (best I can describe it) noise every 30 seconds or so. Pretty sure it's bad.

I booted it off the Hardware Test disc, did the extended test, everything comes up as OK including mass storage... So I tried to boot it off the OEM OS92.1 disc and I get nothing just the old school boot screen with the ? and sad mac. I tried burning a new OS9.2.1 disc in the event that the disc itself is bad, and nothing. Spins up, acts like it's gunna boot but shows me the ? image. What bugs me is I know the CD works, because it booted and ran the Hardware Test just fine. I know it's loading enough of the HDD to show the grey OSX boot spinning ball. But I can't see to get it to boot the OS9 disc so that I can install 9 and get on with my life. I even tried unplugging the HDD in case thats truly bad and causing voltage issues with it somehow.

Any suggestions besides flipping over my table and burning my house down?

Also I use to do desktop support at Apple during the G3 blue and G4 grey days. I was a mac tech independently for a little while after that, so I'm sort of familiar with the solid basics when I can remember them. This just really has me stumped.

[FBz]

You’ve tried booting from the original Quicksilver install disks?
Maybe start from that “square one” and do a clean install / restore? If you can.

C-boot, Option-boot or Open Firmware boot?

Check all cables and wires from PSU to MOBO and ribbon cable connections to the HD. If the machine is new to you, you’ve no idea of how it might have been treated and you may have some scraped or loose wires / connections. If AHT is telling you that all is well…???

Remove and reseat all of your RAM while you’re at it. (And maybe firmware was changed along the way?) AND all cards removed and no unnecessary peripherals attached. Apple original mouse & keyboard?

Battery dead? Zap dat PRAM?

Which Quicksilver? How configured?

[OhDigital]

Yep factory disks. It will see the OSX Upgrade disc and the Hardware Test Disk. But not the OEM OS9.2.1 or the fresh squeezed one I made.

All cables have been checked, everything passed the Hardware Test including graphics card. Machine is empty of anything it did not have when it shipped. Reseated everything, PRAM reset.

OPT from boot and it brings up the boot options, it will not see the OS9 disk, only the OSX disk. It's the most ridiculous thing I've ever dealt with.

At this point I'm going to just create a known good bootable IDE drive using my Mac Pro Tower 1,1 and an external USB case.

I'd boot it from the OSX disc, and double check the HDD thats in it, but my monitors don't like the video out from the computer and I don't have an older monitor available to me currently. Mostly curious as to why the OS9 refuses to be seen. Unless there is something in the firmware that forbids it?

[FBz]

Without going into great detail, you might try the clean install of OS X (and partition your disk into two partitions).

Then if successful with OS X install, attempt to install OS 9.2.2 from the files available here on the forum.

If this works, might save you a lot of effort. Worth a try?

[FBz]

You said "OS X Upgrade" disc. What number version is that?
Quicksilvers shipped with 10.0.4?

[OhDigital]

Yeah I believe it was. It was the first unit that shipped with both.

[OhDigital]

I see there is a way to create a bootable OS9 drive in a classic system. Is there a way to make a bootable OS9 HDD in OSX Tiger on an Intel Mac? 

[IIO]

You said "OS X Upgrade" disc. What number version is that?
Quicksilvers shipped with 10.0.4?

yes, the package said 10.1 and you paid for 10.1, but they gave you 10.0.4 and a voucher for the upgrade. which of course was "sold out" when you tried to get one.

[IIO]

you create a bootable OS9 by formatting a disk or partition not bigger than 192 Gb with HFS+ / Apple Partition Map and put one OS9 folder into it (or run the installer of an OS9 CD.

so far the theory.

however, if a newly bought machine doesnt operate correct, just make everything new.

(not 100% sure now but) you shall be able to boot from a 10.4 DVD and run disk utility from there to format the HDs.
at one point in OSX installer media process you can always skip or quit the installer app or put it to background, then you have access to the desktop and applications.