Can an old iMac G3 drive running system 10.2.8 and system 9 be mounted in the secondary drive bay of a G4 800 Mhz running 10.4.11 and boot from the 10.2.8?

Question

I've done this and the G4 800 Mhz boots up from system 9 on the old iMac G3 just fine, but when I boot up from its system 10.2.8, it runs for only 5 minutes or so and the grey screen comes down telling me to re-boot.  I've run Norton on the system 9 disk and system 10 disk utilities on the system 10 disk of the old iMac G3 and all is fine with it.  Is there some incompatibilities with running the old iMac G3 230 Mhz from the G4 800 Mhz that causes this to happen?  I can access all my old files on the iMac G3 when I boot up with extensions off (holding down the shift key when I boot up), but I would like to be able to use the USB functions when I boot it up.

Answer 1

It sounds like you have a Power Mac G4 Quicksilver 2002, and according to the program Mactracker, it should be able to run on the OS 9 and the OS 10.2.8.
I don't know which version of Norton (Utilities?) you ran on the old iMac drive, but I suspect that might be the problem.  This is from the iMac Tray Loading Service Source Manual:
HFS Plus Formatted Drives
The hard drive in the iMac is formatted with HFS Plus (also referred to as Mac OS Extended format). It is important to note that Norton Utilities version 3.5 is not compatible with HFS Plus (or Mac OS Extended format), and in fact, can destroy data on the hard drive.
Norton Utilities version 3.5.3 or 3.5.2 will not attempt to repair a drive formatted with Mac OS Extended format and versions 3.5.1 and earlier cannot recognize that a hard drive is in Mac OS Extended format and can result in hard drive corruption and loss of all data on the drive.
Note: When diagnosing hard drive problems, it is important to verify whether or not the customer may have used the wrong disk repair software for their drive before assuming that the problem is hardware related.
If you experience problems with a hard drive that has been formatted with HFS+, Apple Computer recommends using Disk First Aid 8.2 (which is included on the system software CD that ships with the iMac). Disk First Aid 8.2 can be used to recover data that may have been deleted by Norton Utilities. (See the Symantec Web site at NO LONGER A VALID LINK-REMOVED FROM ARTICLE for more information on Norton Utilities and Mac OS Extended format.)
Some other disk utility and disk locking programs are incompatible with Mac OS Extended format. Before you attempt to use a disk utility or disk locking program, make sure the version you have is compatible with Mac OS Extended format. Check the documentation that came with the program or contact the manufacturer or the vendor that supplied the program.
Use the Get Info command in System 8.1 to determine how a hard drive has been formatted. Drives formatted with HFS will appear as “Mac OS Standard”, while drives formatted with HFS+ will appear as “Mac OS Extended.”
I hope some of this helps.
Good luck.