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Help finding the restore CD's for a Blue and White PowerMac G3?
Posted by: Huxley on 2019-05-22 08:15:23
Hi everyone!

I'm still playing with my recently-acquired Blue and White PowerMac G3 - it's a fun machine to tinker with!

Since it has two hard drives internally, I've gone ahead and installed MacOS X 10.4.11 on one of them - it's the latest OS the machine can run, and has made it easier to get online which is nice. However, for the other internal drive, I was thinking it would be fun to restore it to factory - presumably MacOS 8.5 or 8.6 if I remember correctly, plus whatever demos or software it would've come with back in ~1999. 

I've been poking around in the Macintosh Repository, but I can't figure out if they have the US edition of the restore CD images or not - something about their naming conventions is frying my brain, and their search function combined with those naming conventions is impossible for me to make use of.

Could anyone here make me an ISO copy of those restore CD's, or just help me find the correct download link?

Thanks!
Posted by: jessenator on 2019-05-22 08:38:42
According to MacintoshGarden, #26 on this list is the correct ISO of it: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-os-install-cd-library

It matches the original shipping version of 8.5.1 anyway (per EveryMac)

Also another page of ISOs show #14 on this list to be the correct one: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-os-85-851-update
Posted by: Huxley on 2019-05-23 14:17:40
According to MacintoshGarden, #26 on this list is the correct ISO of it: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-os-install-cd-library

It matches the original shipping version of 8.5.1 anyway (per EveryMac)

Also another page of ISOs show #14 on this list to be the correct one: http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-os-85-851-update
Awesome, thank you! I've downloaded those images and burned them to CD, but for some reason the G3 doesn't like booting from either disc once burned - one of them gets a blinking "?" in a floppy icon, and the other never progresses past the grey power-on screen. I suspect that the aftermarket DVD-ROM / CD-R drive in the machine may be at the root of the problem, so I'll keep an eye out for a more OS 8 / OS 9 friendly drive I can test with.
Posted by: jessenator on 2019-05-23 15:37:09
Ah, that's a bummer :/  

It took me a number of tries to get an image to work on my Beige G3 MT, but that's odd. There's one on Macintosh Repository, but I bet it's the same image.

It looks like the later revisions of the B&W G3s actually came with 8.6 pre-installed. See if one of those ISOs from the good, numbered list will work.
Posted by: CC_333 on 2019-05-26 17:29:20
It looks like the later revisions of the B&W G3s actually came with 8.6 pre-installed.
Even so, unless there was a hardware/firmware modification that rendered 8.5.x inoperable, one should be able install it regardless of which machine a particular G3 shipped with. Right?

c
Posted by: jessenator on 2019-05-26 18:20:37
Even so, unless there was a hardware/firmware modification that rendered 8.5.x inoperable, one should be able install it regardless of which machine a particular G3 shipped with. Right?
Well, I'm no tech, but that very well may be the case. According to Everymac, the latter 400 and 450 MHz versions minimum OS is 8.6, so that was my next recommendation if the B&W 8.5.1 CD didn't boot. Maybe Huxley's is a faster, more recent one of the series? 
Posted by: CC_333 on 2019-05-26 18:40:48
@jessenatorHmm, interesting. In my experience, with many of these late G3s, the minimum SSW stated by Apple wasn't always true, ie, you could take a Lombard, whise minimum is 8.6, and if the installer is coerced to run, one can run 8.5 on it (I even managed to boot 8.1 on a Lombard once, but USB was broken, so I couldn't type (my Lombard's keyboard was dead at the time (2003-2004), so I used a USB one from my iMac. It was cumbersome, but it worked.)

However, it does take some rather in-depth knowledge to get it to work.

Anyway, TL;DR is you're probably right, and Huxley should try a restore disk from a later-rev of B&W G3.

c
Posted by: Huxley on 2019-05-28 20:43:01
Thanks guys! My B&W G3 is currently stashed under my desk while I play with my slightly-newer-to-me "Quicksilver" G4, but I'll definitely be revisiting this topic sooner or later 🙂

H.
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