oops must've gotten lost in my giant blog of text..
It's not this specific machine's original optical drive but it is an Apple-shipped CD/RW drive that I pulled from another DA I have [it even has that stupid aluminum tape holding it in from the factory ^_-]
The machine does see the OS 9 discs as an option in the option-boot screen, but like I said it just gets to the ? Floppy
I forgot one little sidenote: to boot OS X off the softRAID I have to option boot it, otherwise it just sits at the normal gray blinking Finder/? folder
Google has provided images!
If I don't have the CD in as if I tried to boot OS X without holding option to select it -OR- if I try to boot any OS 9 disc I get this for just a second or two:
After trying to boot the OS 9 disc and that one goes away it switches to this:
I tried leaving the machine unplugged with no PRAM/power cord.. No effect
Also booting without the PRAM has no effect [does the same things]
Open Firmware can't boot USB drives, it does search for Firewire ones though. I tried the disc in a known good firewire drive, same stuff.
Btw, I've been a Mac repair tech for ~6yrs now.. So I've tried to be pretty through ^_-
The only possibilities I can think of right now are: the PCI reset that I found in the service manual [unplug, remove PRAM batt, press power, wait 10+min], and reseating the CPU daughter card [Just because I haven't tried that yet..], or the motherboard has given up on OS 9 >_< [i don't know how that could come about, but it's a looming possibility..]
It's not this specific machine's original optical drive but it is an Apple-shipped CD/RW drive that I pulled from another DA I have [it even has that stupid aluminum tape holding it in from the factory ^_-]
The machine does see the OS 9 discs as an option in the option-boot screen, but like I said it just gets to the ? Floppy
I forgot one little sidenote: to boot OS X off the softRAID I have to option boot it, otherwise it just sits at the normal gray blinking Finder/? folder
Google has provided images!
If I don't have the CD in as if I tried to boot OS X without holding option to select it -OR- if I try to boot any OS 9 disc I get this for just a second or two:
After trying to boot the OS 9 disc and that one goes away it switches to this:
I tried leaving the machine unplugged with no PRAM/power cord.. No effect
Also booting without the PRAM has no effect [does the same things]
Open Firmware can't boot USB drives, it does search for Firewire ones though. I tried the disc in a known good firewire drive, same stuff.
Btw, I've been a Mac repair tech for ~6yrs now.. So I've tried to be pretty through ^_-
The only possibilities I can think of right now are: the PCI reset that I found in the service manual [unplug, remove PRAM batt, press power, wait 10+min], and reseating the CPU daughter card [Just because I haven't tried that yet..], or the motherboard has given up on OS 9 >_< [i don't know how that could come about, but it's a looming possibility..]