its a 15". when I bought it they told me it was a 17" and have never questioned it. will it do me any good to bring it to the Apple store??

I have made an appointment for Sunday. In the mean time today my airport failed this morning on my MacBook Pro, so I'm on ethernet now. so I have two reasons to go to the genus bar.

Does your 15" iMac G4 have a Superdrive, or a combo drive?

Trevor

combo Drive...why?

Because that means that it is the newer iMac G4 15", which cannot boot OS 9. You will need to either use Classic, or else get a different computer if you still need OS 9 booting.

See my post #35 above in the thread for the details about the two models of iMac G4 15" 800 MHz.

Trevor

pfhannan, I'm going to note some things here that have already been said both here by Trevor and in the Apple Discussion Forum where you have been also having this conversation. I'm repeating them because it's not clear you're grasping the distinction.

Booting into OS 9 is one thing. Running OS 9 via the Mac OS X Classic emulation is another. As Trevor said, the iMac you have "will not boot OS 9, but of course can run Classic emulation of OS 9 when used with OS X 10.1 through 10.4. Classic does not work on any computer with OS X 10.5."

If all of the necessary components were not installed on the iMac prior to your acquisition of the machine, you will need to purchase the OS X retail discs for either 10.1, 10.2, 10.3 or 10.4 to get your machine configured with both OS X and a usable Classic mode.

It's not clear why you require OS 9 booting, so it's possible your need for OS 9 will work fine in the OS X Classic emulation.

Then I guess I need to buy another, my intention is using OS 9.2.2 for my website www.dhsclassof55.com as I use Adobe pagemill, and is no longer supported. (presently on iMac Dv 500)

As has been pointed out above, it isn't clear why you don't just run your OS 9 software in "Classic" mode under OS X. I would imagine that PageMill would have no problem running under Classic.

I haven't a clue on how to do that. I have spent too much of these nice people's time in trying to help me, I just need to sell it, and buy a machine that has it already functioning in both OS's. my last ditch effort will be sunday, I am bringing it to the apple store.

It has already been mentioned in this very thread. Please take some time to read. I have this same bad habit but usually when someone points it out I get it.

All that didn't work, so I bought a Hard Drive with OS 9.2.2 & OS X 10.4.11 installed. the seller said it works on my machine, but i get that awful ? mark. I have gone back and checked all my HD connections, tried to boot using the Option key, but it just doesn't see it. I also zapped the PRAM. any suggestions?

Is this an internal drive that you added to your Mac?
You need to know a bit more about installing drives (jumpers etc) to get internal drives installed correctly.
Maybe consider putting that drive into a FireWire case and use it as an external drive.

Yes an internal., yes the jumpers are in different places, should I take the jumper off the old, and put it on the new?

I have no knowledge of such hardware things. Maybe someone else will pipe in here.

Don't just pull the jumper and match it - The jumpers are specific to hard drive manufacturer and to the device, there insn't one global setting - old macs didn't like cable select so you'll have to make sure the jumper is on the right set of pins to make the drive master. Some hard drives have labels that mark out where the jumper goes to make it a master - for those that don't you'll find jumper setting info on the hard drive manufacturer's websites.

I'll pull it and play with the jumpers, can't hurt.

You may be playing for a long time - some drives required a pair of jumpers to set them to master.

What's the make and model?

here are some details;
officially designated as the "iMac (Flat Panel)", but is more commonly just called the 15" iMac G4 700/800 MHz. It will successfully boot OS 9.2.2 with Mac OS ROM 9.0.1, provided on the original discs. It was sold from January 2002 to February 2003. The 800 MHz model shipped with a "Superdrive" (i.e. a DVD burner.)

sorry I meant specifically of the harddrive:

http://sfalcon.ntrweb.com/random-shots/drive.jpg
http://sfalcon.ntrweb.com/random-sho...ve-jumpers.jpg

I thought we had determined that yours is the later '2003' model, which cannot boot to OS 9. Is that correct?

The Hard Drive that was in the iMac when I received it was a Western Digital WD400. 40 gb. ( J8 jumper settings) the replacement i want to install is a Maxtor 30gb with an Apple logo, (jumper J50 Master on, Slave off) I hope you can make heads or tails of this.