Start-up Keys
I recently inherited an
old iMac G3 from my brother (thank you).
I love it, I never had one of the original coloured
iMacs, however; it refused to start, instead flashing
the folder question mark at me.
Simple fix you'd think? Just stick in a Mac OS CD,
and off you go! Not quite. Every version of the OS I
stuck in the CD slot, it spat back out. It also
ignored an external USB drive with an OS on.
Puzzled, I thought I'd best try and remember some of
those start-up keys, problem is there are so many and
some are from my Mac OS 9 days, I wonder if any
normal Mac user would remember any?
I tried resetting the PRAM (Preference Ram) etc.
which involved holding down various keys, until I
remembered to just hold down the Option key!
Holding down the Option key at start-up allows you to
decide on which drive to boot your Mac from, in this
case it allowed me to select a Mac OS 9 CD, and
finally started.
Strange, I thought it would've just selected it
itself when putting the CD in, but there you go. It's
now up and running Mac OS 10.3 Panther very happily.
Not everyone will know these various start-up
keystrokes, so I thought I'd provide links (rather
than retyping them all).
Apple's list
and a more in-depth explanation of the keys
from Peachpit.com.