mac tech help

help!
the smuk that sold me a graphics card said to update firmware and to do so I had to boot in os9. I changed the preferences and now it doesn boot up-floppy with a question mark.

I can get into open firmware okay, can anyone suggest a command in there to make it boot into osx? thanks heaps
luckily I have a spare pc to type this
AC

Ouch. You may need your OS X disc :frowning:

But a couple keys to try:

  • Hold down X during boot to force into OS X

  • Hold down Option during boot to get a choice of boot volumes

  • Hold Shift during boot to perform verify repair (you get no feedback–you can stop holding Shift when you see the spinning wheel under the apple)

But if you’re already in OF you’ve probably tried those already.

(Also, to force to boot from CD or DVD, hold C, and to force-eject a disc, hold the mouse button during boot.)

Ummm, this doesn’t sound too good. Anyway, to choose which OS to boot into hold down the option key on start up until you see a choice between OSX and OS9. Get back to us after that… any GFX card that needs some OS9 crap seems very suspect to me.

no luck
option while booting shows me my hd but not an option of osx or classic.
x down on startup just doesnt seem 2 do anything
brought g4 wih cdrom drive and a dvd of tiger. -secondhand. nevermind
still listening…cheers
AC
edit
this command in open firmware shows all the directory contents, so i know my disc is intact

dir hd:\

and theres the startup file

dir hd:\System/Library/CoreServices/BootX

if I knew what exension it had maybe I could boot it from open firmware?

Silly question, but did you try taking the GFX card out and booting it up again without it installed?

What is the card btw? And what is the computer… Quicksilver G4?

quiksilver-havent even opened card package-stuck with updating firmware-apparently we have to boot in os9 for firmware update…?

Have you tried anything like this?

Also don’t some Macs of that era have an internal reset button of some kind? Maybe that’s the same thing as retting NVRAM.

BTW, it’s neither quick nor easy nor free, but I THINK you can get Apple to send you Tiger on CDs if you send them the DVD for exchange.

Or could you borrow an external DVD drive from someone? Or even a Mac with DVD drive–and then connect your machine in Target Disk Mode vie Firewire?

i never had to deal with that but a couple silly ideas…

could you select your hd when it gave you the option when holding x? [and did you?]

did you try holding shift at start up? in os9 that turns off extensions. doubt that’s the prob but who knows…

You shouldn’t have to boot into os 9 to install firmware. My guess is that if you booted into 9 and installed a firmware update it may have overwitten a newer firmware version, hence the inability to boot into X. You might try searching the Apple support site for OS X-required firmware releases for your G4 model and seeing if you can get one of them installed. This may overwrite the one that caused the problem.

hey guys cheers for the help
no luck, but there should be an os9 cd in the mail soon, which should enable me to get to a few more settings.

yeah this open firmware malarkey is suspect. turns out the dude was trying to do me a favor by helping me update it. but the os9 only stuff seems weird.

because I had seleced os9 in the preferences panel as startup disc, the x key is rendered null.no go w shift

Neil-thanks-tried but no luck
Morgan-good tips, will wait for os9 disc and take it from there

with luck i’ll be back 2morrow up and running… :stuck_out_tongue:
AC