i just received a blue and white g3. it's a nice little machine. it'd be 
even better if i could actually install an operating system on it. here 
are the important specs:

400mhz g3
9gb hd on an adaptec 2940 uw2 scsi card
dvd-ram drive

the configuration is straight from apple back when it was obtained (not by 
me). so here's the problem: i can't boot from cd using the normal 
procedure of pressing the 'c' key when the machine chimes on boot up. i 
first tried using a mac os x boot cd but that didn't work. i know the cd 
works because i was able to install os x on my beige g3 with it. so i 
tried booting using a netbsd install cd. this required going into the open 
firmware console and manually entering the commands to boot the cd, which 
is "boot cd:,\ofwboot.xcf netbsd.macppc".

so i figure i can boot the mac os x boot cd this way and type "boot 
cd:,\\:txbi". this doesn't work and the error messages are rather cryptic.

i then continue with installing netbsd. everything extracted as 
expected. now i have the other problem of trying to boot from the 
harddrive. the problem is that the correct command to do this eludes me. 
since the hard drive is on the adaptec controller, the expected command is 
"boot /pci/pci-bridge/ADTC,2940U2B/disk@0:*:,\ofwboot.xcf netbsd" where * 
is a partition number from 1 to 9 (i don't know which partition the os 
resides on so i tried them all). nothing works.

so, wtf am i doing wrong? anyone with the same configuration and can 
display their open firmware settings? my next step is to replace the dvd 
drive and see if that helps with booting from cd.

i summary:
1) unable to boot mac os x boot cd with either 'c' key or manually
2) able to boot netbsd cd manually
3) able to install netbsd
4) don't know the right commands to boot off of scsi harddrive