PowerMac G3 Blue & White Hard Drive Trouble/Help Requested

Hey all,
I work for a small IT/computer repair company. We recently got in a PowerMac G3 Blue & White (300 MHz; 512K cache; 64 MB SDRAM) which has what appears to be a bad hard drive.
(Upon boot, it comes up with a flashing disk/question mark and you can hear the drive making noises it shouldn't be/spinning up and down/etc.). I've tried booting with the OS CD (8.5.1) in the drive and get a bit further, but it complains of an unimplemented trap, and if I try holding down C to boot up, it starts to load, but then the screen flashes and it eventually locks up (but without the hard drive connected at all doesn't even get that far; just a gray screen).
I've done some research and think my first step should be to replace the hard drive (though if that's not the case, I'd appreciate some insight). I haven't fixed many Macs before, though, so I still have several questions:
1.) The drive that came with the machine is a 6 GB IBM connected to the mainboard IDE interface. It lists it as having Apple HDD Firmware. Is this firmware required on any drive I'd have to get to work with this machine, or can I go with any IDE drive and not worry about it like with PC's (I'm going to stay as small as I can, but with newer drives, that's probably still a lot of gigs)?
2.) Similarly, when I do get a new drive, assuming that's the problem, will OS 8.5.1 be able to format and use it, as I've never done an install of this particular OS before. I'm assuming I just boot from CD and go through the process?
3.) Unfortunately, I've discovered this unit is using the Revision 1 chipset. So I may need to go for some sort of PCI IDE interface option. Any recommendations for a cheap solution here, and is this a definite must to get this working reliably?
4.) The owner of this machine also inquired about a DVD/CD burner (would have to be external as there's no room inside). Any recommendations that would work well with this machine, or is this machine not suited to using these types of drives well?
5.) Can this Apple G3 run Mac OSX well enough, as the client has also expressed interest in upgrading OSes, or is it too slow for this?
Thanks much for any help - this is fairly new territory for me!
Shaun

Shaun,
After the iMac killed the used Mac market and the G4 killed the value of the B&W G3, I closed up shop and moved on to better ways of making money. lol
One client wanted a newer mac cheap so I bought her a used B&W G3. One month later they came out with the Mac Mini for $125.00 more than a fully configured B&W. With in the year, that client moved up to a Mini. The B&W has plummeted in value since that day. Current market is G4 or better now.
For a hobby machine, it is still a great computer. To pay for service time at shop rate, that model can quickly become a money pit. You may have already checked out some sites like this:
http://www.macgurus.com/products/motherboards/mbppcg3bw.php
so I apologize in advance if you already know the history of issues with that machine.
Yes we can walk you through the resurrection of a Blue and ***** ( honest typo) Mac, but religious preferences aside, if you value the client, tell them about the value of a mini. It was built to run OS X. It has behaved flawlessly ( except with MS Office ) for us here.
The model of B&W Mac that you mentioned has many service land mines. Those traps for the unwary can be easily avoided with SCSI interface cards and a SCSI drive. Your fees and the cost of the upgrades might add up to close to the cost of a bare bones Mini. Just something to consider.
First thing to do is to "zap the PRAM" and Texas mac man gives a good tutorial here:
http://www.geocities.com/texas_macman/pram.html
The Apple OEM HDD firmware is not required but it does make life much easier on your client.
If you have a spare Western Digital IDE drive kicking around, see if you can format it to Mac with Drive Setup in the Utilities folder of any drive you can get to boot that Mac after zapping the PRAM.
The Mini can be ordered with a DVD burner.
Good luck.
Jim

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I am a member of creative cloud. I had hard drive trouble. How do I go about redownloading lightroom and photoshop cc

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I am a member of creative cloud. I had hard drive trouble. How do I go about redownloading lightroom and photoshop cc

Refer
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japamac wrote:
Actually, it will run without the fan assembly in place, which is a bad thing, IMHO.
Semantics, eh?
I should have said "NO, it shouldn't be run without the fans."
(It's all fine, and I appreciate being kept honest.)
I guess it's like not running a machine without a heat sink installed on the processor, some things which we consider not needing to be said must be said.....
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Open up the HD bay and take a look at the model of the HD.
If it is a SEAGATE MOMENTUS 7200.4 they are known to fail in as little as 1 month from install, and do not last more than 6 months.
Google the brand and you will see that most people are reccomending that you remove the SEAGATE product ASAP (data recovery is next to impossible) and replace it with something else.
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DO A FULL BU NOW!!!
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Hi timinbovey
That's a temperamental Tiger is it not? I've heard hard shutdowns can cause problems, but that is pretty unforgiving.
There is little point trying to reinstall without first attempting to correct the 'Invalid B-Tree Node size' error.
So your Tech Tool pro disk was no help. Hmm.
The fastest and most expensive option would be to buy DiskWarrior which could fix the corrupt file structure on the disk.
Before that you could try and start in FireWire target disk mode where you put your iBook's HD on the eMac's Desktop, then insert the Tech Tool pro disk into the iBook and running it from the iBook's drive see if it can see the eMac's drive and perform a repair on it.
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Spin Cycle,
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If the old drive is not accessible then, no, you will not be able to access all your files on it. In this case you may need to look at the following:
Basics of File Recovery
Files in Trash
If you simply put files in the Trash you can restore them by opening the Trash (left-click on the Trash icon) and drag the files from the Trash to your Desktop or other desired location. OS X also provides a short-cut to undo the last item moved to the Trash -press COMMAND-Z.
If you empty the Trash the files are gone. If a program does an immediate delete rather than moving files to the Trash, then the files are gone. Recovery is possible but you must not allow any additional writes to the hard drive - shut it down. When files are deleted only the directory entries, not the files themselves, is modified. The space occupied by the files has been returned to the system as available for storage, but the files are still on the drive. Writing to the drive will then eventually overwrite the space once occupied by the deleted files in which case the files are lost permanently. Also if you save a file over an existing file of the same name, then the old file is overwritten and cannot be recovered.
General File Recovery
If you stop using the drive it's possible to recover deleted files that have not been overwritten with recovery software such as Data Rescue II, File Salvage or TechTool Pro. Each of the preceding come on bootable CDs to enable usage without risk of writing more data to the hard drive.
The longer the hard drive remains in use and data are written to it, the greater the risk your deleted files will be overwritten.
Also visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQ on Data Recovery.

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Hey I'm kinda new to the MacBook world and have a stupid question. I am getting a late 2009 MacBook unibody (white polycarbonate, model MacBook 6.1... I believe) I am switching the original 250gb 5400 rpm hard drive out for a Seagate Momentus XT 750gb 7400 rpm hybrid hard drive. I want to keep everything on the original hard drive and just pop the new hard drive and start fresh with Snow Leopard. I'm going to purchase the SL cd from apple but I do not have the original grey start up cd that came with it (my girlfriends little sister lost it). Do I need to call apple for that cd in order to start fresh on my new hard drive or is everything I need on the SL cd?
Also how do I go about wiping the whole computer when I put the hard drive in and use SL? I want to essentially have a completely clean laptop with a new hard drive.
Thanks for your help in advance.

The SL disc you get from Apple will do everything you need. When you nstall the new hard drive there will be nothing to wipe, the drive is the only piece of that Mac hat stores anything so you don't need to worry about that. Post back and let me know how that hybrid drive works out....I'm interested.

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