I just bought my iMac G3 and I was excited and ready to install Mac OS X 10.3, unfortunatley my Mac is having problems selecting it as a start up disc. I really want this to work. Can anyone help me? Mine is a tray loader.

I went to school this morning and picked up the Mac OS X 10.3 software from my advisor, I was super excited to get out of my boring Mac OS 8.6. My Mac is a tray loader. When I put the disc in the tray, it has no problem reading it, but when I go to the file to install and I press the restart button, my Start Up disc couldn't make Mac OS X 10.3 my start up disc. And when I tried using the Start Up disc on the file, it would restart, but when my screen turns back on, it flashes a question mark with a folder behind it and a Macintosh symbol and eventually begins running OS 8.6 again. Please help me!

There are several things...
There is a firmware update that is needed for Mac OS X.  Fortunately, you can still boot into the "classic" Mac OS, because you need to be able to do so to install the firmware update, if it has not been already.
http://support.apple.com/kb/DL1263
The Mac OS X installation disc needs to be a retail disc, meaning a disc that was sold separately in a box for use with any supported Mac.  For Panther (10.3), I recall that it was black with a big metallic X, and it comes on three CDROMs.  If it's a gray disc that came with another Mac model, it probably will not work.
RAM - Your iMac needs to have a minimum of 128mb of RAM for Panther.  At least 256mb (or more) would be highly recommended.  512mb is the max.
Hard drive - The largest stock hard drive in tray-loader iMac G3 was 6GB, which is not very large for Mac OS X.  The installation of Panther will take up about half that space.  This does not prevent booting the installation disc.  It's just a consideration for doing the installation itself.
For a tray-loader iMac, you may want to go with Mac OS 9 instead (up to version 9.2.2).  Panther is a good version of Mac OS X, but there is not that much software that works with it.  On the other hand, Mac OS 9.x was the latest and greatest version of the Mac's OS for a LONG time, so there is a large library of old but useful programs.  Some are still being maintained today, such as
http://www.floodgap.com/software/classilla/
Mac OS X on a tray-loader iMac G3 will feel quite sluggish.  Mac OS 9 will feel snappy, and require much less RAM and hard drive space.

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for