I've recently purchased an ex-lease eMac as a replacement for my aging iMac 'Bondi Blue'. It is a eMac 1Ghz, Power PC G4 (ATI Graphics) 256MB RAM 80GB HD and Super Drive. Which I make as being a M8951X/A from the spec sheet. It was supplied as having testing as fully operational but with the hard drive 'wiped', no OS or software. External condition as received was 'as new', including the keyboard and mouse.

I've got a set of brand new eMac OS X (10.2.2) and eMac Software restore disks, along with the OS 9.2.2 and eMac Hardware Test, all on CD.

eMac hardware Test CD runs and tests the eMac indicating all hardware is okay.

However, trying to load the OS CDs, even following the instructions of pressing C on restart with the OS CD in the drive it does not seem to recognise the CD and start the OS load. Is there something simple I'm missing in the process not covered in the user's manual?

Help!

Regards.

Col

Are they the discs that came with the machine? I am sure you can't boot into an OS earlier than what the machine came with.

Well - no - you pretty much have it in one.

You need to have the OS X Installer 1 Disc in your eMac first, and then restart with just the C key down to force it to boot up off the Installer Disk.

If this fails, try booting up with your option key down - and see if the eMac shows you a blue screen that should contain two squares: one of your Hard Drive, and the other of your Installer CD. Let the cursor tick away for a while till it becomes a proper arrow cursor and select the Mac OS X Inster - and then click the arrow on the right.

What happens?

cheers,

cw

According to MacTracker, the original OS was 10.2.5, so you must have the disks from an older eMac, which wont work. The best thing to do would be to find a set of 10.3 or 10.4 retail disks.

Hmmm - this is so - yet there's the eMac (ATI Graphics) 1.0GHz, which could boot up off either Mac OS 10.2.5 - or Mac OS 9.2.2... and then there is the eMac (1.0 GHz G4) - which could only boot off Mac OS 10.3.

One assumes that because Col was given a Mac OS 9.2 Installer CD, that it could be the eMac (ATI Graphics) 1.0GHz... though so many of these sales wind up giving buyers the wrong installers - yet only to just make sure it's Mac OS X of some variety.

Col - tried booting up off the Mac OS 9.2 Installer CD? If it works, or doesn't work, we'll know which type of eMac 1GHz you've been sold.

Checking from the serial number and spec inside the SuperDrive door, this is a eMac 1Ghz G4 ATI Graphics.

It refuses to boot from either the Mac OS 9.2.2 Vers 2.1 or OS X 10.2.2 Vers 1.0 CDs that I have which are a brand new set. But we know the thing basically works because the Mac hardware test CD (from the same pack) works fine and checks out the hardware as okay.

So it sounds as if I need another variant of OS and software to load.

Any good suggestions for sources?

Thanks

Col

maybe the hardware check is the same for both emac?
I believe you have the newer version of the emac, Do you have 10.3 or 10.4?

Looking at the tech spec sheets that Apple put out for this model, it should come with OS.X version 10.2 which is the OEM disk versions I have. From what I can see from my own research there were about four stages of eMac releases/development and this version is the second version/model range released. There are the original eMacs, the the 1GHz eMacs with ATI graphics, then the final range with the 1.2GHZ and up processors.

So reading some of the comments above, because the disks I have are 10.2.2, whereas what I really need is 10.2.5, until I can get access to the proper disks I'm pretty well stuck. OR, can you boot from a later software release for eMac? 10.3 or 10.4?

Or is this where I go to my friendly local Mac service centre, hand it over and say "Fix"

Col

Find another set of installer originals from somewhere (retail pack of 10.3 or equivalent from another Mac) and try to boot the eMac, given all the instructions above. If it doesn't want to boot off the optical drive from the newer originals, perhaps the optical drive has a fault, or has been replaced with a non-Apple drive that hasn't been correctly set to Master.

B.

The retail versions of 10.3.x and 10.4.x will work fine (I don't know about model specific installers) and the retail versions are universal in as much as they will install on all later PPC Macs. As 10.3.x is superior to 10.2.x I would be inclined to chase down a retail version of 10.3.x which you should be able to find secondhand or new quite cheaply (I would expect not to pay more than ~$75). 10.4.x being a current release you will be probably be paying much the current recommended retail for that one (~$175).

Thanks all who posted replies. Following the leads offered I sourced a full install DVD version of OS 10.4.? with an upgrade to 10.4.9. The full install version is one one of the Mac black disks.

Fired up the eMac, opened the superdrive, put in the DVD, then shut it down. Restarted holding down the 'C' key and it fired up beautifully first time. Everything loaded on a treat including all the updates from the extra disk provided by the supplier. Also came with OS 9.2.2 and some other Mac software so worked out a quite a good buy - bought it for just on $100.

So the eMac is now working fine. Still need to do some customisation of software and cross loading various files from the trusty old iMac (which is what I'm using for this) and then the eMac should be well and truly ready for business.

Once again, thanks for the various advice and suggestions, helped me figure out a path forward.

Regards,

Col