MDD G4 Suddenly refuses to boot.

[Rob McCleave]

Dual 867 MHz MDD G4, August 2002 vintage. Came with OS 9 and OS X 10.2
installed. Been using it in OS 9 all along.
Today it refused to start up.
"This system will not work on this Mac." Well, it's the System that has
been on there since the factory, bucko! Boot with the OS 9 Restore disc
1. Hold down the C key.
"This system will not work with this Mac."
Huh? It's the CD that shipped with the machine!
Start with Hardware Test CD. It boots, hardware checks out OK.
OS X Install Disc 1 will boot.
???
Run the disc utility available from the menu when the Installer starts
(cool, I didn't know there was that option). Disk checks out fine. But I
don't want to install OS X again, because I don't want to risk losing
all of my files.
Did Apple plant a time bomb in ROM to tell the MDD systems to refuse to
boot OS 9? I want to boot up in anything, back up the Users folder, and
then reinstall everything. But I can't seem to do it.
Anybody seen anything like this? Any suggestions?


--
Rob

[Rob McCleave]

Bought Norton Utilities. Could boot in OS X and OS 9 on the Norton CD.
Ran some diagnostics, it found some problems. Still wouldn't boot from
HD. Booted in OS X on Norton, switched startup disk to OS X on HD. It
booted!

The OS 9 restore discs are not made to boot. You boot in OS X, then run
the OS 9 restore from OS X. Which is fine if you can boot into OS X in
the first place.

Did a restore of OS 9 and it works again. I'm not sure what the problem
was, but I'll be keeping an eye out for signs that the HD is
deteriorating.



In article <rmccleave-CFA444.20102522072003@nr-tor02.bellnexxia.net>,
Rob McCleave <rmccleave@sympatico.ca> wrote:

> Dual 867 MHz MDD G4, August 2002 vintage. Came with OS 9 and OS X 10.2
> installed. Been using it in OS 9 all along.
> Today it refused to start up.
> "This system will not work on this Mac."

--
Rob