Hello, I've been trying to upgrade a recently acquired (free) 333mhz iMac G3. I tried putting in the G4 9.1 disc I have from my G4 mac to install 9.1 and it's telling me that I need the latest firmware which is in the "CD Extras" folder. I do not see it in there anywhere. I also have a 9.2.2 disc that I've tried installing from. I've tried booting while holding the C key and everything, nothing seems to work. I've tried upgrading the iMac's firmware by downloading the 1.2 firmware but since this pile won't read CD-R's I have no way of getting it onto my imac. I have my imac hooked up to my router now (using verizon fios) and it first recognizes it as a coax connection, then assigns it an IP. I tried sending the file via AIM from my computer to the iMac and it locked up the whole system (had to completely unplug the iMac from the wall, couldn't shut it down). If anyone has any suggestions as to how I can get OS 9 up and running on this machine it would be GREATLY appreciated. Thanks in advance. Justin

Double check about the firmware..i think it *may* be a false message..i'm very sure that the only time you *must* update it is for OSX..i think you'd need to be booted from cd anyways to install it..and there's no going back once done..so be careful.. I think , but it's only a guess,, you might need an iMac 9.1 CD..as iMac CD's are tweaked for them, and in fact won't install on desktops, so the reverse may possibly be true, im not sure..although if the 9.2.2 is retail it should install just fine..what's the problem there? Does it not install , or just not boot? Can you mount it? All mac CDROM drives can read CD-R discs, going back a dozen years already...if yours won't , and you know for sure that it's a CD-(minus)R..then your cd drive is suspect, which would also cause all those other problems you mentioned.. The TCP/IP control panel has a setting in 'connect via ethernet' which you should be set to..,for DHCP, which would automatically obtain the IP from server, even if using a router, as far as the mac is concerned, it is just a standard ethernet connection it still obtains the IP same way....if anything's been changed from that it wont work right..is all OK there? HTH

I you have a MAC OS CD for a specific MAC it will not install, you need a plain vanilla version, or an Upgrade CD AFAIK. This may be of interest: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.... Though it may be worth investigating OSX. http://support.apple.com/specs/imac...

As for the CD-R not reading, if other CD's read in the mac, than are you burning this CD-R on a PC? If so, which format are you using??? Try using only "ISO 9660" format, not Winblows format called "juliet".

I have an iBook running OS 9 and it does nothing but crash. I have heard worse things about OS 9 as well, but apparently 8.6 is comparitively stable. Perhaps the computer is trying to tell you something.