At startup-system error and divide by zero

Question

I've been having a lot of problems starting up my beige G3 mini tower, it has 233mhz, 384ram, mac os9.1. I've zapped the pram and held the shift key down to boot with extensions off, didnt work. I've changed the battery twice in case the first replacement was bad, it started up and ran long enough for me to trash all the preferences, I tried to change the extensions, but when restarting it was back to not completely starting up. I've tried pressing the button near the pci slots with the battery out, 30 seconds, waited 30 minutes and held down the button for another 30 seconds, replaced the battery, checked the sound card for looseness then at startup it worked till I changed the time and date. I tried the battery and button again this time waiting over night between pressing the button for 30 seconds, after startup I was able to run disc first aid and it said everything was ok, then crashed again when I tried to change the date and time. I've even tried booting up from command/option/o/f, I'm not sure what firmware is but it would try to start up that way,but was very slow with a os cd in the cd drive. I tried to erase the hard drive but I couldnt get it to start up from a cd, iv'e tried os9, the original cd that came with the computer and a system recovery cd.
Most times when trying to start it up it chimes, then the happy mac with a grey screen, then the mac os screen, then the bomb with "system error" and under that "bus error" under that it says to restart with extensions off. sometimes the button for restart will even work with the cursor. Once, after trying to start up after all the battery removal, pressing button near pci slots , pressing com/opt/o/f, extensions off, the screen getting to the mac os then the bomb dialogue, it said system error and instead of saying "bus error" it said "divide by zero". Thats the first and only time I've seen that one. Also, the grey screen (with the happy mac disc icon) now has horizontal lines with texture? that I havent noticed before.
got any ideas what I should do next? I probably wouldnt bother with my G3 anymore because I just bought a new Imac, but I have a vinyl cutter hooked to it, it has the old round serial port cables and I would have to buy new software, cables and dongle to use it with my new Imac, I also have illustrator, photoshop, scanner, and drawing tablet on my G3 that I cant use on my new Imac (intel) leopard.
Is my hard drive or motherboard dying? is there a way to find out if and what hardware is messed up? and if so, is there still still parts out there for this G3?

Answer 1

Hi, R1camper -
I ran disc first aid from the cd and and it said it couldnt fix-overlapped extent allocation,4,479.
That is a type of disk directory damage, one which Disk First Aid can not repair.
Alsoft's DiskWarrior can usually repair that kind of damage, with no loss of files. If you choose to go this route, suggest you call (or email) Alsoft's sales department, and request an older version of DiskWarrior - the current versions won't run on your Beige G3/MT.
However, if you can manage to live with the loss of files, you can probably replace the hard drive for less cost.
Your Beige G3/MT came with either an ATA (now often referred to as PATA and/or IDE) drive or a SCSI drive - it could have been ordered with either when the machine was new.
With luck it will be an ATA drive, since those are the least expensive and the easiest to install. Such drives are not Mac-specific - any ATA drive designed for internal use and of appropriate size will work. The only item of concern is to set the drive's jumpers properly. The drive should be jumpered as Master (it may come preset as Master or as Cable Select - Cable Select will not work on your model), unless it is a Western Digital in which case it should be set to Single if that is an available choice.
There is probably little to gain by getting a 7200RPM drive, especially if there is extra cost for one vs. a 5400RPM drive - the relatively slow internal bus speed on your machine will not be able to take significant advantage of a faster drive.
Re the RAM, if you have the time you might try replacing any you took out. Over time the contact the module makes in its slot can get iffy - removing and replacing the module usually fixes that problem, by wiping the contacts clean.