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Ibook G3/Dual USB (2005) technical question

  • 15-09-2007 10:52pm
    #1
    crianp
    Closed Accounts Posts: 66 ✭✭


    Hi there everyone, well I make this post at almost 12am because I am done trying to figure out the whole MAC situation, a friend of mine recently purchased a second hand ibook G3 (http://lowendmac.com/pb2/ibook3.html), he is not to good at computers in general and after spending 100 euro buying Tiger, was a little mad when it could not work. He does not have alot of money so asked me to try and figure it out, I am a Windows/PC person all the way and am pretty competent as far as most technical people go, been building gaming machines and diagnosing the assorted problems for a few years. However I never expected to not be able to solve the problem, I thought it was a simple issue of going into the bios and selecting the ibook to boot from the mac os 9.2.2 cd I had.

    Well to my major dismay, tried many different things and nothing worked, search the apple support forums and this support forum without any clue. I have a few questions first:

    1 - Where and what does the command button look like? What does the option button look like, the pdf manual of the laptop does not have a keyboard explanation

    2 - How do I get an operating system installed on this ibook, from what I understand, my initial estimate of using os 9 is good due to the system requirements but when I power on the book, it just ends up going to grey screen with a question mark/two face icon flashing

    I tried pushing all sorts of keys at random with no effect and since I don't know what all the symbols mean, I am at a bit of a loss. If no one can explain on here, i would like to meet up and perhaps you could have a look at it otherwise I will endevour myself, thanks for your time


Comments

  • #2
    SouperComputer
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,949 ✭✭✭SouperComputer


    luckily, its dead handy on the mac.....

    The command key is one with with the apple logo on it, adjecent to the spacebar.

    To boot from a CD, simply hold C (as in the letter C) while starting. If it doesnt boot from the CD then there is an issue either with the drive or the disk.

    Dont bother with OS 9 unless you have a specific need for it.

    So to install OS X:

    Insert the OS X CD
    Hold the C key down
    Power up machine, while holding C
    The disk will boot, will take a while.
    When it boots up, use "disk utility" to format your target disk.

    After that its pretty easy, there are no drivers or whatnot to be concerned about, just be sure to update the machine after your first boot. Go to the apple menu/Software update.


  • #3
    crianp
    Closed Accounts Posts: 66 ✭✭crianp


    Thanks for the help Souper, will plan to get my hands on a mac os x cd and let you know how it goes.


  • #4
    ZENER
    Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,163 ✭✭✭ZENER


    crianp wrote:
    Thanks for the help Souper, will plan to get my hands on a mac os x cd and let you know how it goes.

    Didn't you say above your mate bought the Tiger install for 100 euro ? If I recall correctly Tiger is on DVD by default. Does the iBook you have (your link doesn't work by the way) have a DVD drive to begin with ? If you have a 9.2.2 cd boot from (using soupers' instructions) it and go to the apple menu and select system profiler. In here you will see everything in the iBook. If it says you have a Combo Drive then you have a CDRW/DVD drive.

    Another way to identify which model you have I think is to lift the keyboard. In this guide on page 2, the bottom pick shows a barcode sticker to the left of the Airport card, this sticker contains the configuration info for the mac you have. It will have something like:

    iBook G3/700/40GB/256MB/Combo

    Check it out and let us know. You may need to upgrade the RAM a bit to get Tiger to run properly - it prefers 512MB, most iBook G3 came with 256MB. All is not lost if your machine doesn't have a DVD drive. It's possible to boot a Mac into Target Disk mode and install to this from another Mac. If it comes to it we can explain this in more detail, meanwhile use the info so far to get as far as you can.

    ZEN


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