Hello everyone,

I recently bought a second hand iMac G3, 400MHz processor and 128mb ram, 10gb harddrive. I've always wanted a Mac just for the fun of it, and i finally got it. I dont think this imac is dead, but i'm having trouble on boot. It is not booting the traditional way, it is going down to firmware boot.

It gives this info:

MacOS: Boot Failure! (0xF3C481F6)
Mac OS: parcel initialization failure - bad checksum

Then i have 2 choices from the firmware for booting or shutting down 1. mac-boot command and 2. shut-down command.

So, i give it the mac-boot command; in starts showing the mac face for a few seconds, then it displays this message below of it:

/pci@f2000000/mac-io@17/ata-4@1f000/disk@0:5,\\:tbxi

after maybe a minute it finally displays the face and ? symbol; typical of not finding the system. Problem is that, even starting the imac with the system disc on it and pressing "c" at bootime, it still goes to the firmware thing...

Is there a way to tell the imac "hey dont boot at firmware, boot at cd!!" ??

Oh, by the way...during the "/pci@f2000000/mac-io@17/ata-4@1f000/disk@0:5,\\:tbxi" message I can still press the "alt" key and it shows me the retry arrow, the system harddrive labeled "Lorelai's comp", the system CD and the straight right arrow.... i try clicking on the harddrive and also on the CD icons to try to boot, but it only refreshes the screen changing from the traditional blue/purple background to a red-ish background and arrow/drive's buttons get funny colors...

i dont know what is going on....i dont think the imac is dead....i guess it has to do with that firmware booting default thing...

please help....
thanks in advance.

Hi there,

Its my pleasure to welcome you to CompuForums. I look forward to you becoming an active member of our community. Whilst we are more than happy to provide technical help to our members, its always nice to see members helping other members or using the Lounge for non technical posts. It just makes it nicer to see members posting other than only when they need help or assistance.

I have very little knowlege of MAC's but maybe give this a go. Open Firmware prompt (hold Cmd-Opt-O-F after the chime) and try to read the CD:

dir cd:,\

or the HD:

dir hd:,\

Once again thank you for becoming a valued member of our forum. And I look forward to hearing more from you soon.

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Hi,

i tried the commands you said,

and they do list the CD and the HD...

what do i do next? (dumb newbie silly questiond )

i tried this:

boot cd:,\ and also boot hd:,\

and it answers:

LOAD-SIZE is too small.

I guess it completes the command to boot hd:,\ load-size=0 adler32=1 :S?
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This user added the following:
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Hi guys,

i finally managed to fix this thing, with some help from people at apple forums...the main thread is here

Apple - Support - Discussions - Boot Failure iMac G3 400MHz, goes on ...

So basically i found the problem...iMac ran out of firmware battery...it was dead and i wasnt aware of it..so i checked it and changed it with the one from the working iMac...also i did the PRAM reset procedure with the firmware console comands:

reset-nvram
reset-all

after the iMac restarted, there was a black screen..wasnt booting at all, so i was intrigued about the status of the main ram modules...i replaced them with the ones from the working iMac and at last! the iMac came to life :O:O:O

now i have to buy a battery and a ram module or two, but the main problem is solved...

thankyou all,

cheers,

luigui.