I recently just replaced the hard drive in my iBook G3 because the last hard drive died. I didn't get a chance to save any of the information that was on the original hard drive, except for what I had on my desktop PC. Sadly enough I don't know enough about Mac's to get by.

The hard drive I used as the replacement was purchased from an Apple dealer, so with all worries tossed aside I installed the new hard drive. Here's where things get a little tricky. I've spent the last week trying to figure out what I need to do to put the Mac OS on the new hard drive, but I can't seem to figure out what I'm doing wrong. When I purchased this laptop I received only 3 discs with it, and those were the restore discs. I've been asking around and everyone tells me that I should be able to use the discs I have to set up the hard drive, but I'm having trouble doing so.

What am I not doing right or doing wrong?

iBook G3 700mhz
128mb Ram
20 gig HD

You need to turn on the iBook and put in the first disk. Then hold "C" down on the keyboard. It should then boot off the cd and you should be able to install from there.

Been there and done that several times. The disk boots up and then the computer continues on to the flashing folder icon. From what I can tell, I'm missing the yaboot file to set up the hard drive. So basically I've got a set of restore discs but no install.

Is it actually booting off the CD?

Have you reset the PRAM? (Command (Apple) + Option + p + r) keep holding those keys until you've heard the chime 3 times (might be 2 times or 4 times, depends on where you look )

Not having partitions on the disk should not prevent it from booting off cd. Is this a real apple cd or a copy?

I've reset the PRAM a couple times now. They are the real cds, but just the restore discs. I finally got into see Apple, and they told me to call Apple Care and see if they can send me the original install discs. So hopefully that should help.