Hi,

I found an iMac G3 with Mac OS 8.6 installed in our loft, but there are a few problems with it. I'm going to install Mac OS 9.2 on it, but I'll need the Startup Disk feature in the Control Panels to select the CD on which the Mac OS 9.2 installation will be. However, there's a problem. Unbelievably, the control panels are just ... not there. There's one for an old piece of kid's software and one for what I think is Adobe software, but the rest of the Control Panels directory is empty. Is there any way of restoring the system's various Control Panels? This is pretty strange. (By the way, the machine only boots in Safe Mode due to a screwed-up extension which I've yet to sort out. I also don't have any Mac discs at all currently, including restore discs and installation discs. I'm going to burn the 9.2 disc on Ubuntu with GnomeBaker soon.)

Thanks in advance!

I have never heard of safe mode in a non- OS X Mac…
I think you are referring to an extension conflict…
The iMac G3 has a USB 1.1 port… You could use that for file transfer… But you'd have to sort out the Extension conflicts first…
Open the Hard Disk icon (Default name is Macintosh HD) and the System Folder, then open the Control Panels (disabled) folder the other Control Panels may be in there…

You should be able to boot Mac OS 8 or 9 directly from the CD by holding down the c key as it boots.

I burned a Mac OS 9.2 installation CD using GnomeBaker on Ubuntu and it seemed to work, but I put it in the iMac G3 and held the C key on boot, and it just went to the Mac OS 8.6 startup screen (that's the OS on the hard drive).

Strange, it has always worked for me. Perhaps the disk is not a valid startup disk? Under System Folder is there a folder Control Panels (Disabled) and Extensions (Disabled)? If so, you could look to see if the startup control panel exists there and put it back in Control Panels and restart. It's probably a long shot, but if you're lucky they haven't been totally deleted.

Those folders aren't there.

If you can get an Mac OS 8.6 boot disk (the Mac OS X Server 1.2 install on this site may work), you may be able to copy the Startup Disk control panel from that System Folder. Don't actually boot off the 8.6 or OSXS 1.2 boot disk, just look for control panel. I am not sure whether your install disk is bootable or not. If not, that may be why holding down c at startup isn't working.

It should be bootable. I burned it with GnomeBaker which recognises the filesystem (and should therefore burn the image perfectly well including the boot sector), and I got the ISO from BetaArchive - I'm assuming that the ISO I got was bootable. Maybe GnomeBaker didn't burn it entirely correctly, but I doubt that, because in Ubuntu I can mount the CD and read its contents and its label.

Does BetaArchive have Mac OS 8.6 available for download? If so, I would download that, mount the image, and get the control panel from the System Disk. I just checked the Mac OS X Server 1.2 install disk and it does have the Startup Disk control panel in the System Folder. Unfortunately, I believe this is Mac OS 9.0 so it might not work. Best bet is to use a 8.6 install disk which I don't have.

Get an 8.6 install disk and extract the Startup Disk control panel with TomeViewer.

Thanks for the suggestion, but all's resolved now. I have OS X 10.2 on the machine anyway now.

Just download OS 8.6 from the Apple website. http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1259?viewlocale=en_US

That is only an update for 8.5, not a standalone version. The latest standalone version available from Apple for free is 7.5.3, along with an updater for 7.5.5.