Hello again,

Well I've learned quite alot since this post.
Here is the story:

I got an old G3 that would not boot into the Mac OS. The discs were missing. So I just burnt an ISO of 10.1 and installed it.
The first problem I had with 10.1 was when various applets would not load properly making the desktop inaccessible. I figured this was due to some faulty updating practice of mine. Of course, I was experimenting quite a bit with the OS so maybe it was something else.
At any rate I finally got 10.1 working just fine on a G3. By reinstalling it and just being very careful about updates.
Later I realized I could not network with any of the other computers in my home network. I followed some online tutorials on configuring Samba but that never seemed to work out too well. The problem was that SWAT though working lacked some of the functions the tutorial claimed would be there! Strange.


Later I tried to update the entire distro but I realized it might be easier to just use a 10.3 disc. Unfortunately, 10.3 is only available on DVD and the G3 did not have a DVD drive. I tried installing it with an external DVD player but it wouldn't boot. Updating the whole system from within 10.1 is problematic too. I have to manually OK an endless list of conflicts. I think there are too many too ignore.

At some point along the way, I wanted to try the G3 with a MAC OS. I got ahold of a 9.2 ISO, and and a 10.3 Tiger ISO. But with SUSE on there, I could never get either of these OSs to boot and install. I could never get YAST to install either of the MAC OSs. In fact, even if I tried to install another Linux distro like Ubuntu or Yellowdog for example, I couldn't figure out how to get yast to even find the installation, and forcing a disc boot never worked (hold 'c' down for rev 2 G3 B&Ws).

So I figure might as wel get rid of Linux and start from scratch. But this never worked out completely. At first I just couldn't delete the Linux partitions from within Linux. But eventually I found a way to delete the entire drive in terminal as root. This worked out fine, but now I still cannot install either of the Mac os, nor can I even install the original IMAc restore software someone loaned me.
So I've tried plenty of approaches such as disconnecting the HD, zapping pram, resetting the motherboard. I think the HD maybe the real problem here so I went ahead and ordered a new HD.

Kind of surprising that the only OS that will work on this Mac is Linux! LOL.

Anyway in the future I foresee a dual boot SUSE/Mac OS X G3 with a 80 GB HD. Right now I'm about to see if my system reset procedure worked.

Well if anyone else in this forum has encountered any of the same issues as I have, I'd love to hear your reply.

Thanks.