Weird behavior on iMac G4 running OS 9.2.2

[indigo_k]

Last night while I was running the iMac for a while, getting the Airport card and base station working together so I could get it online again, the system just did a hard shut down out of nowhere. I'm assuming it just overheated, but not totally sure.

Powered it back up this morning, and weirdly the date/time info had been lost so I had to reset those manually. And then I noticed that the System Folder is flickering, like the Finder tries to read it, then loses it, then finds it again, then loses it again. I can't access anything in the System folder while this is happening, so can't run Disk First Aid on it.

Also the machine has a kernel panic when I try to boot into OSX to attempt some diagnostic stuff.

So I'm wondering if anyone can tell, is this more likely a software problem or a hardware problem? I was already planning to replace the HDD with an SSD at some point, but wasn't planning to do it right now. And reinstalling the OS would be much more practical if that would do any good.

So yeah. Thoughts?

 

[indigo_k]

Oh! Also wondering if there's an OS9 utility or Control Strip module that lets me monitor the CPU/GPU temperatures.

 

[phunguss]

Do you have any other G4 machines with FireWire that you could boot in Target Disk Mode, or external Firewire Drive you could boot from? Early CD-Rom versions of Apple Toolkit used to have TechTool Pro on them. White disk with a stripe of red.

 

[indigo_k]

I don't have another G4, I'd thought about Target Disk mode. I did just find an OS9 'boot kit' on MacRepository that can be installed on a USB drive and booted, so I'm going to try that, it has software to reinstall OS9 and do some disk repair diagnostics too.

 

[phunguss]

Here is a link to the disk I was talking about.

 

[indigo_k]

Okay, so I think the problem was something to do with my OSX Tiger partition trying to use my OS9 for Classic mode. Over the weekend while I was working on the mac I had a couple system crashes, and tried rebooting into OSX to try to fix it. The first couple times I tried that the machine panicked while booting up and had to force restart. This was when my 'disappearing System folder started. Running Disk Doctor showed about 4800 'lost' items in the Catalog file, which it was unable to repair.

So, I spent yesterday offloading my OS9 applications folder onto a flash drive, then re-initialized the HD and installed ONLY OS9 on it, no second partition, and I haven't had any problems with it since. All my extensions are running fine, and everything 'appears to be OK'. So, I'm not going to worry about the HD for now, and will just enjoy being able to play around in OS9 again on original hardware for the first time in like 20 years.

 

[indigo_k]

Oh! Still looking for a recommendation on a module or something so I can keep an eye on the CPU temps.