[geeks] Problem booting G3 B&W

[Geoffrey S. Mendelson]

On Wed, Sep 07, 2005 at 12:04:40PM -0400, Ido Dubrawsky wrote:

> I recently got a G3 B&W PowerMac for the private school my kids go to (one of 
> the teachers uses Macintosh and so they bought this and I'm in the process of
> getting it going).  

Which model? Check the web for the way to tell the difference. If it
has a double IDE disk bracket, it's the second model. If not, it may be
the first. The first model will NOT read properly from a fast IDE drive.
The bad thing is it might and then will fail with strange errors.

The largest drive that works with the onboard IDE controller is a 20 GIG
Maxtor, some other brands such as IBM don't work as they are too fast.

Mine (a first model) has a fujitsu 13 gig drive in it.

 
> It's got 640MB of RAM, a CD, a Zip Drive, and a 6.4GB Maxtor hard drive.  It
> booted up just fine the first day but now it won't recognize any drives except
> for the CD (I can boot into the MacOS X installer and that's about it).  It's
> running OpenFirmware 3.X and the default boot-device is set to:

There could be 2 problems that I can think of with my magic turban on. :-)

1. There is a memory problem. Try cutting the memory down to 256 meg.
   The maximum memory that will work is 1024meg but no single chip can be
   larger than the ones in an 128 meg DIMM. If you have a 256 meg DIMM, it
   MUST have two sets of chips. 

   The memory also has to be all 133mHz or the memory bus will run at 100mHz.
   Some 133mHz RAM will run at 100mHz, some won't. 

2. The drive itself is bad. If you have a second model it should work with
   a bigger drive, possibly 120meg. If you have a first model it will not.
   Note that some thrid party pre-OSX software and OSX 10.0-10.2 would 
   automaticly set the drive to the lower speed and any drive that it would
   recognize would work. This was dropped in 10,3 (Panther) and 10.4 Tiger.

2a. Most of the DVD drives will not boot DVDs. Especialy third party ones.
    In order to install Tiger, I needed to use XPostFacto, but unistalled
    it when I was done. I've since gotten a CD version.


> which is the default (I set it to that value after zapping the PRAM when it
> started having boot problems...before it was set to ata0...something -- I can't
> recall).  I've tried the installer again but it doesn't see the drives.

Which installer? The older MacOS installers will not recognize a non Apple
drive. I don't know if OS9 will or not. OSX will format just about anything.

> I got the '?' folder several times before it finally recognized 
> the disk -- now I just don't get anything).

That's caused either by a bad or dying disk or the PRAM being set to a 
device that no longer exists.


> Anyone have ideas?  Should I send it back to the seller and request a 
> replacement Mac?  Should I try an ATTO SCSI card and drives first?

If you have to buy one, then get an IDE controler. They are around $70
new. If you get one the firware understands than you can put up to a 120gig
drive in either model. However if it's a second model, I would just 
put a smaller drive in it and see what happens.

Geoff.

-- 
Geoffrey S. Mendelson, Jerusalem, Israel gsm at mendelson.com  N3OWJ/4X1GM
IL Voice: (077)-424-1667  IL Fax: 972-2-648-1443 U.S. Voice: 1-215-821-1838 
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