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[devils_advisor]

Im not asking about you preference i just said i dont keep up with every model because im only interested in g4's. But the chime is a good indication for problems. You can look that up. There is a sequence to find out whats wrong with it.

[devils_advisor]

Forget about that sequence. And forget about the fact that you tested the drive in a different machine. Its time to narrow it down. Take the ram out and unplug everything thats not needed. Put replacement ram in.

[TGOTR]

I don't have much PC-100 ram. I was lucky to have a laptop that used it (an older IBM Thinkpad), but the ram tested fine.

[MacTron]

Place a "Mac Os ROM", "System" and "Finder" files into a HFS  formatted USB drive and boot with this.

[devils_advisor]

I dont ask to test the ram i try to single out and narrow it down. Or we can just guess around till somebody comes up with the right guess. Do the steps to find out if your board is ok and i mean every part of it.

[devils_advisor]

Place a "Mac Os ROM", "System" and "Finder" files into a HFS  formatted USB drive and boot with this.

do you expect that old machine to be capable of booting from usb?

[MacTron]

Place a "Mac Os ROM", "System" and "Finder" files into a HFS  formatted USB drive and boot with this.

do you expect that old machine to be capable of booting from usb?

Yes I do.

[TGOTR]

No PPC Mac can boot from USB...and even if this one did, it's USB1.1

[devils_advisor]

And if it does how does it solve the problem? He still needs to test the rest to make sure the controller is ok.

[devils_advisor]

No PPC Mac can boot from USB...and even if this one did, it's USB1.1

thats not exactly right but i think thats later builds of g4's that can do that.

[TGOTR]

I was not aware of that. None of my G4s will, nor will my G5 tower.

[devils_advisor]

We still have that imac as a unsolved prob. Are you willing to test any of the things said?

[TGOTR]

I've tested the ram and all that. It stays at the folder icon no matter what. I have thrown in even more IDE hard drives, and nothing. It won't even boot into 8.5.

[devils_advisor]

Ok last time ... unplug everything thats not needed (including harddrive) and start it, turn it off and start to add one by one.

[TGOTR]

That'll be a pain ahha. But give me some time.

[devils_advisor]

Btw after you unplugged EVERYTHING do a pram reset. My avid wouldnt do shit when it arrived and i ended up taking it all out and reseting the whole machine even the battery was replaced and that bitch still wouldnt do a damn thing so i did it again and got it back to normal.

[supernova777]

I can get it into the Open firmware, the battery is good, and the ram was tested in other machines, and work. I reset the PRAM as well.

unless u tested teh ram in another "bondi blue" exact same model mac, then your test is inconclusive.. the bondi blue was the first generation of imac (identifier imac,1) it requires PC66 SDRAM which is rare.. so if u are using PC100 SDRAM
that could cause you the problem.. you need to use ram that specifically says 66Mhz on it

how many times has a mac failed to boot, and miraculously worked with different ram... many many times

[supernova777]

u know it would help alot if u could update what the mac is doing now.. are u still getting a bus error liket he image u included above..?

still getting scrabled video?

what exactly does it do when u boot now?
do u see an icon of some sort? does it pop open a different error?

please explain if u want us to effectively help u

mactron suggested booting from a usb drive in an attempt to sidestep + avoid the ide controller to see if that is indeed the problem

[TGOTR]

I'll track down PC-66 ram as I do not have any.

I got it to the Open Firmware screen, with some scrambling. But if I let it boot up as normal, or if I hold the C-key...it does nothing to boot a CD. It has a fresh HDD in it now (50gb), because the old one started clicking when I tested it again.

[supernova777]

I'll track down PC-66 ram as I do not have any.

im just trying to guess what the problem could be... i may not be correct. im just trying to give u ideas to try but the everymac page says pc66 - and i have had similar problems with ram incompatibilities with PC motherboards where the motherboard would not boot with pc100 installed...amd would only boot when i installed pc66 ram... to make it even more confusing -- later on i found that another brand of pc100 worked fine... its a complicated thing.. sometimes ram will work for a bit and then refuse to work.. this is why vendors provided QVL lists of ram that was tested to work properly..

also-- booting from c.. unless u have the proper keyboard that came with it. or a similar mac usb keyboard from 1998/1999 (should have a power button it aswell) it may not work correct for example using a keyboard from a imac g5 or powermac g5 on a g4 will give the same result.. holding c does not work properly. unless its the right keyboard for the mac..

if the powerbutton on the usb keyboard turns the imac on it should work fine (holding c to boot the cd)

also the cd drive may not like the brand of cd-r media u have used.. newer dvd/cdrom drives dont work the same with older cd media or cd rom drives from the 1998 1999 period.. there were changes to the optical media standards... u need to use a good brand "CD-R" such as verbatim and burn the discs on a slow speed for them to work reliably (if u are in fact using burned discs)

u can force a cdboot by booting into open firmware and typing the command i think its : "Cd-boot" or "boot cd" i forget  which