# imac G3 DVD - RAM/Boot Problems



## zowie2 (Jan 23, 2006)

I have an imac G3 DVD running OS 8.6. It ran fine with 256 MB of RAM. I recently upgraded the RAM to 1 Gb, and now I have problems booting up. On some occasions it boots fine, but most of the time it hangs with no POST. When I remove power and restart, it boots normally. It's almost as if the previous shutdown failed and it needs help on the next boot. Are there any firmware updates that might help? (It's also connected to a wireless bridge via the ethernet port).


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## [email protected] (Nov 11, 2005)

was the RAM formatted for your mac? I remember on my old G4 Sawtooth having to flash the ram and reformat it to get 9.2 to read it correctly. I can not for the life of me think of where I got that from. I think I got it from Apple's support site.


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## DoorGah (May 14, 2005)

Hello,
Have you tried putting the old RAM back inno new? Also, have you zapped the Parameter RAM?
If it's dual bus RAM (100/133), it acts up. Also, remove all peripherals that are hooked up, just keyboard/mouse.


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## emoxley (Jan 6, 2004)

Maybe the new ram didn't seat properly in the slot? Or maybe the new ram is bad. It happens sometimes. I'd agree with DoorGah about zapping the Pram. In case you don't know how..... Hold down the Apple key, Option key, "P" key, and "R" key, while booting up. Hold until you hear the startup chime about three times, let go the keys, and see if it boots ok. Once it boots up ok, I'd run Disk First Aid (usually in Utilities folder), just to double check things.
Good luck!


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## VegasACF (May 27, 2005)

[email protected] said:


> was the RAM formatted for your mac? I remember on my old G4 Sawtooth having to flash the ram and reformat it to get 9.2 to read it correctly. I can not for the life of me think of where I got that from. I think I got it from Apple's support site.


You're kidding, right?


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## [email protected] (Nov 11, 2005)

no vegas it is a fact obviously you're just a user.


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## macguru (Oct 9, 2005)

...must have meant flash the ROM....Ok Ram is of varying quality always buy Apple Spec ram for older Macs I would buy mine from macsales.com rather than some other places..........Ram carries no information between bootup so there is nothing to flash....no information is stored in RAM it's ROM.


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## macguru (Oct 9, 2005)

....even may reset hardware in some Macs that have a hardware reset switch.........


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## [email protected] (Nov 11, 2005)

reformatted


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## [email protected] (Nov 11, 2005)

Ah guru you're right. I flashed the ROM and reformatted the non apple memory. I am sorry it was like 4 years ago. Thanks for correcting me.


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## macguru (Oct 9, 2005)

Is we exercise our abilities to HELP other users and not get into a you're right no I'm right game. That helps no one gets us all peeed off at each other. The Important thing is we flex our minds not our egos. I hope this makes sense because its the truth. Lets start by being believable to others.


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## emoxley (Jan 6, 2004)

zowie2..............
Did any of the suggestions help?
If you got it working right again, we'd like to know what fixed it, so we can pass along the fix, to the next guy, with the same problem. Thx.........


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## zowie2 (Jan 23, 2006)

Okay...it was really quite easy, though troublesome to get there. 

I inserted the old RAM and got a normal boot. 

Then I flashed the BIOS to the latest update 4.1.9. 

The problem was that I did not have OS 9, only OS 8.6, so I had to track one down from Craigslist, then install, then do the update. Once I did the update, the new RAM worked fine with a normal boot. 

What a pain in the butt though....


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## emoxley (Jan 6, 2004)

Ok, thanks.
Glad you got it working again!


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