I recently conquered a beige G3 desktop from university. It's stock + RAM.

Unfortunately, I can't get it to boot. Booting from the HD which has OS9 or an OS9 CD bombs after loading one extension, with the message 'illegal instruction'. Booting without extensions just gives a blank white dialog the same size as the bomb dialog, and then freezes.

Booting from an OS8.6 CD freezes at the beginning of the installation.

The machine doesn't bong, which I think is a bit strange. I've zapped PRAM and reset the CUDA with no effect.

Any pointers?