The dreaded ? and alternating Mac logo folder

Question

I recently won quite a few macs from an auction from public school district, emacs and imacs from 2001-2004 range. For security of course all the drives were cleared. I am quite experienced on pc's as I am a technician at our local cable company, but when it comes to macs I know just enough to mess things up. But we troubleshoot both, so I would like to learn more about them. I plan to set these up at my church as a computer lab, but not sure where to start. I have 2 sets of boot up discs that are labeled imacs, but neither the imacs or emacs will boot when holding c down at boot. These were in a seperate box though so not sure they even go to the computers I got.
What I have read about and done so far:
Followed instructions online about finding the hd (that was fun)to make sure there was no physical damage, the district didn't touch it physically, on 2 mac laptops tha came w/ they just took a drill and drilled through the hd. So no physical damage to hd.
Next, I did the pram reset and got the ding it says, but no change on next boot
Next, I found an article on the open firmware and got into it, and I was like cool(finally a break) something that looks like dos, I can work with this. And I found some artice telling me to change the boot device to X but that didn't work either. And looks like a whole nest of hornets when I started reading about all the stuff that can be done in OF. I found a walkthrough of setting up the partitions.
I thought about calling apple to try to obtain a boot disk for the emacs, and I am sure one the imac or imac dv boot discs will work on the imacs. But how do I get these hard drives prepared to take the boot disk (I understand that is proably what is missing from ibm format and partitioning I can do in my sleep).
I didn't have any info on the macs before, but I noticed the OF had some info on the machines, so I will post that to the thread later
Questions:
1. What would a typical school employee do to clear a mac hd quickly, he had a lot to deal with so I am sure didn't put much time into it, I mean he drilled through the laptops, and some ibm's he just took the hd out? (can he ruin a hd permanently without cracking the case)
2. If the hd's are useable, what do I need to do get it prepped to acccept a boot disk?
3. If unable to get boot disk for emac, can I used what I found on bit torrent to boot, if it is copied from a pc, or should I get an imac working first then try to firewire to an emac (possible?)?
4. In the status these macs are in, after I get one working can I firewire to others(there is like 30 of them)to get them working or do I need to work on each one?
I know this will take a while, and prepared to keep looking till I can find an answer, not expecting a quick fix. If you can answer any one of the questions or offer assistance I would greatly appreciate it.
p.s. A lot of questions I know but if anyone can take me under their wing and help me get these working for the church, I would be more than happy to send you one at no charge

Answer 1

Hey Scooter,
3 - 333mhz/ 32 ram/ 6gb hd
Tray loaders.
Hard to find larger RAM for therefore I usually keeps these on OS 9.2.2 altho' these will run Panther or Tiger.
I set these up with SMIs of preK - 2nd grade. Things like Living Books, Kid Pix 3 Deluxe, Green Eggs and Ham etc.
Slot loaders
2 - 350mhz/ 64 ram/ 6gb hd/512k cache - These have no FireWire
Those below all have FireWire that's a very important fact and makes installs and transfer of data very easy using target mode. They can also be made to boot from an external firewire.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583
3 - imac dv/400mhz/512k L2 cache/128 ram/13gb hd (under i/o)
1 - 400mhz/ 64 ram/10gb hd/128 p
1 - 500mhz/ 64 ram/20g hd
12 - 500mhz/128 ram/20g hd
All of the slot loaders will take PC100 - PC133 (those that will under clock) and that's relatively easy to find. I use salvaged RAM from PII-PIIIs.
These will also use salvaged ATA/IDE hard drives from PCs anything up to 128 GB.
Be very aware of the firmware version before running anything past OS 10.2.
I run 10.4.11 in all these that I set up.
I have a bunch of iMac installers for OS 9 so email me.
Emacs
These are all excellent machines. All have FireWire and G4 processors. They're just a little hard to pick up :<}
1 - Emac 700/384mb ram/40gb hd
This one had IVAD cable problems that resulted in the display rolling up like a window shade.
5 - G4/1ghz/384mb ram/80gb hd
3 - 1.25ghz/ 512mb ram/80gb hd
Run the serial #s of the two models above here:
http://www.apple.com/support/emac/repairextensionprogram/
Pay special attention to any that fall within the range. The problem was bad electrolytics that you might be aware of in Dells, Sonys, IBMs etc. These were the overfilled caps that swelled and burst/failed.
Two can be seen in the user access area on the bottom.
The 3 year extended repair program is quickly reaching it's end.
You can run the serial #s here:
http://www.chipmunk.nl/klantenservice/applemodel.html
That will give you the date of manufacture.
If you see problems catalog and identify them and approach Apple about a repair. I would think you have an angle as a large not for profit if there are a lot of machines Apple might opt to affect free repairs even tho' the machines are outside the 3 year limit. Keep trying as that's very dependent on the Apple supervisor you get.
Finally look here at mrtotes 2nd post the 3rd site he lists:
http://tinyurl.com/5cpdhr
I think you will find some very useful downloads there for the iMacs and the eMacs.
Some of the new ones might not be there. In that case email me and I'll see what I have.
This is what I do here in Chicago:
http://www.vimeo.com/clip:150591
Richard
Message was edited by: spudnuty