I got a used Beige G3 MT with a 4GB Seagate HD. Thought it might speed things up if I put in a WD 7200rpm 30GB HD - just swapped ATA drives. Could install OSs in two partitions, but it would never boot from the new HD. Read some tips on various Mac repair sites and saw that WD drives are hit or miss (whether the driver will work), but looked like Maxtor drives tend to work. Turned out Office Depot had a good deal on a 30GB Maxtor 7200 rpm, but same problem with it. I reinstalled the original 4GB HD - everything was fine until I got tired of looking at those 30GB HDs. Stuck the maxtor in a PC and reformatted it (PC). Then put it back in the G3. Big mistake - disk utilities on the OS X install wouldn't recognize the HD, so I couldn't even try to install the OS on it. Figured no big deal - put the 4GB original drive back in. NOW I'M DEAD IN THE WATER. I can't boot to CD or to the HD. When I power up, I get the mac music, never see anything on the monitor, and about 30 seconds later, it sounds like the speaker makes a "moo". I've tried to reset the PRAM, but same thing. I know how to get "dead" PCs going from this state, but I've never had a Mac do this to me before. HELP!

I have been reading other posts and should mention two things I forgot on the original question: (1) Each HD set to "master" by jumper. (2) I never did a firmware upgrade - the only one I found seemed like it was for SCSI card (which I don't have). Thanks

Yeah, the beige G3s don't have any firmware to update, so you couldn't have done anything there ;) What if you boot from CD without a hard disk installed? p

Pickle- I'll have to try that when I get a break this weekend. One thing I didn't mention - I'm using a hard drive swap rack (I use these on PCs a lot to swap HDs for different OSs) so I don't have to keep opening the case to try different drives. I don't think the Mac can tell it's there, but have you heard of problems with these. Also, I've read many of your replies to other posts looking for ideas. If I still can't boot with no HD, would you next try removing the PRAM battery? Finally, a lot of posts mention cmd-option-O-F or cmd-option-X-O. What do these do and is there a list of these available online? Thanks, Mark

Are you shutting down and powering off between swaps? If so, it should be fine, although you might try it directly on the bus without the intervening electronics just to be sure. The OF boots into Open Firmware; XO only works on a Mac Classic so it's irrelevant here. p

Hey pickle... Not sure why Mark cannot get the machine to boot on the old drive but I was wondering if you remember if the 8 gig limit applies to this machine? As in the Boot OS has to be installed on the first partition no larger than 8 gig. I can't remember but I figure you will.

Yep, but only in OS X. Doesn't explain why the original drive won't work, or why the utilities can't even *see* the drive, although it certainly explains why OS X wouldn't install on the larger drives ;) p