X

All-in-One G3 Macs: problems starting up from CD-R/CD-RW discs?

All-in-One G3 Macs: problems starting up from CD-R/CD-RW discs?

CNET staff
2 min read
Troy Barkmeier reports a problem starting up All-in-One G3 Macs from CD-R and CD-RW discs:

"There is a ROM/system board problem on the new PowerMac G3 All-in-one systems, code named Artemis. These machines have Matshita CR-587 internal 24X ATA CD-ROM drives that can read nearly any type of CD, including CD-R and CD-RW. However, they will not boot from CD-R or CD-RW! Booting from any Mac OS 8.1 startup CD works fine, but put a CD-R/RW in the drive and it's 'blinking question mark disk' time. How do I know it's a ROM/system board problem? 1) I have a PowerMac G3 desktop unit with the exact same CD-ROM (right down to the firmware revision, 7S14) and it boots to anything I put in; and 2) I have 44 of these Artemis units and I've tested about six so far with the same results. The icing on the cake is that if I attach an external CD (I have a Ricoh MP6200s and a Panasonic CR-7501, as well as an old Apple 300 external) to these All-in-one units and use Command-Option-Shift-Delete, I can boot to CD-R/RW discs with no problem."

Update: A reader reports: "To make a CD-R bootable on a G3 Artemis, you can make a SCSI image of the existing Apple Bootable CD and then mount that image and make any changes to it. This is with Toast 3.5.4. You must use the Apple Bootable first. The OS install for G3 is about 400Mb, you can then make a second session to fill up the remainder."