I have imac bondi and am getting ? flashing on start-up. I dont have start-up disc for this machine but do for ibook which the imac doesnt seem to read. when I press apple c it doesnt read anything and PRAM reset doesnt work. Is there any way i can start up without a disc eg. similar to single user/verbose mode with OSX?

Flashing light likely means no MacOS on it, or a harddisk problem..the iBook software may not be compatible..you'd need the proper iMac software disks or the retail version of OS9 or X. If you know that there's an os on it, try disconnecting all the peripherals other than mouse and Keyboard, and hold down the shift key.. If you don't have any OS on it, you can't start it period,without a disk, or if your drive is shot and have to reformat or replace the drive, you'll need to buy a copy of it on ebay or so, or i have a 3 disk set in french for OS 9.1 or the red OS 8.5 iMac disk i could part with for a bit.. i no longer have an iMac... Let me know if you need it...

try to get diskwarrior it solves 905 of the problems that can cause this flshing start-up icon. otherwise you'll have to reinstall the system you had before.