"unknown word" error message upon boot up

[wolfspring]

I have a beige G3 running OS 9.2, I recently purchased a external drive. My intent was to use the external for storage. It has OS 10 already on it. I was going to try and use it as my boot up drive and that's when everything went haywire.

It comes up with a grey screen with the message "unknown word" I've tried all the alternate boot ups like trying to boot up from a CD,etc. It does not seem to respond to the keyboard either. I pulled the old drive and installed a SCSI internal drive and pulled the battery and everything else I can think of. Is all lost?

HELP! HELP! HELP!

Thanks.

 

[jmgalvin]

I don't think, not sure, that the beige g3 was really OSX compatible. I'm assuming that you had selected the outboard drive as your startup disk in the OS9 control panels.

Is the original drive - OS9 - still in the machine? If so try disconnecting everything - outboard drive, printer, extra internal drives, etc, - making sure that the pram battery is installed. Unplug the machine from power and plug back in. Unplug keyboard and mouse and plug back in. The try starting up without holding down anything. Macs will try to find a boot volume if the named one is not present. If that does not work, try booting holding down the Shift key and see if you can start with extensions off.

If you're still dead try holding down the command, Option keys to see if you get a rebuild desktop prompt. Theoretically your desktop database is looking for that mounted OSX outboard volume.

Try starting up holding down Command, Option, Shift, Delete keys. See if you get a window asking you to select a startup disk. This only works with some machines.

If you're still dead, try to start again from the cd again by holding the C key.

 

[wolfspring]

Thanks for your prompt response.

Theoretically I thought it would come up with a message looking for its startup disk too, but that didn't happen. I've tried all the keystrokes to try on startup...it is as if it is not responding to the keyboard so I'm at a loss.

Any other suggestions, or am I looking at getting a new computer all together?

Thanks again.

 

[jmgalvin]

Trying to start up from another drive, even with the wrong os should not have caused much of a problem, other than having to possibly restart from cd, select old startup disc, and restart.

You mentioned scsi. I assume that was another drive, not the original. If you did anything with the original, you might check that its plugs are properly seated.

You might also check that the keybard and mouse are plugged in tight. I once got a call from one of our users that the keybard and mouse had stopped responding. I dumbly lead her through a bunch of steps - forgetting to teel her to check the plugs. When all failed I had to go to the machine - then realizing that she had inadvertently loosened the plug.

 

[wolfspring]

I've made sure everything is plugged in tight, I even tried to access it by networking to another Mac and it doesn't show up on the other computer.

Thanks for your help though. If anything else pops up, let me know.