Another XPF victim... |
December, 16, 2002 10:47 AM |
fred |
Hi there, That's it, I've done it, my 8500 is dead. It chimes but I can't get video and does not boot off the drive. I tried all known tricks to zap the PRAM to no avail (COPR, open-firmware, battery and 24 hours), except re-installing the original processor (which I do not have anymore)... I was having problems installing 10.2 with XPF, I tried changing the RAM config... and voila, into its coma it went :-) So my message is yes, XPF can do damage but yes, I was warned and do not complain. Except if someone has another bright idea to awaken it? Would having a prince kiss it work maybe in this special season? :-) Thanks Fred |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 26, 2002 4:06 PM |
tmh657 |
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Hmmm. I would ask if the "educator" edition is the culprit in this scenario. I too have problems with OS X on my legacy mac and wonder if I should just give up and get a new box. I have an 8600 w/ a Sonnet G-3 400 card. 704 MB of Ram, don't ask how I got there with the ram . An Ati, PCI card for the monitor. My problem is Lately I boot into OS X and there is no dock. I can get the dock when I reboot. I want to use OS X all the time but it can be a pain., I have the 18 gb IBM drive from OWC, as well as the original 2 gb drive that came with the box and a 4 gb drive that OS X lives on. I use OS 9 from a partiion on the 18gb HD. I want to use 10.2 but I am not sure if I should go there with this system. Any suggestions? |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 24, 2002 4:22 PM |
powderhaus |
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Sonnets support isn't the greatest, they are kind of stupid. i had a problem were i could not just incert the disk once to get it to work. when i go it working i asked why and he said He did not know and told me that i don't need to use the cmd option p r to zap the pram. he said it like i was still having the problem and the keyboard way was the way i finaly (after about 50 alternating floppy zaps and keyboard zaps) got it to |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 24, 2002 2:21 AM |
marcush |
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That's what they told me when I first called about this problem, but I insisted and Sean emailed me a disk image of the emergency disk. That got my machine up again where everything else mentioned here failed. |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 23, 2002 11:05 PM |
krissel |
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FYI: In my correspondence with Sonnet tech support I found out that : "The emergency floppy isn't needed anymore with the G4/700 and 800 cards. It was only to restore a patch into the NVRAM on the earlier G4 upgrades. This patch is in the hardware now so it can never be eliminated hence you'll never need to "restore" it." Of course earlier upgrade cards may need the patch at some time. |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 23, 2002 7:12 PM |
marcush |
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Sprocketworks and Paul Findley hit the nail on the head. This is a classic NVRAM corruption. You will need an emergency boot floppy available from Sonnet or an Xlr8 CD or Powerlogix CD. You can also get one off of an OS 8.5 CD if you have one around. I've had to boot this way more than once to get my Power Tower Pro back into a usable state. last time was when I installed the Sonnet G4 800. Same thing can happen with G3's too. You'll probably have to remove everything non-stock from the machine that you can but sometimes this is not necessary. |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 23, 2002 6:34 PM |
paul_findley |
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bjar1: Jaguar doesn't work with anything less than a G3. Fred: I can email you the xlr8 emergency boot floppy image. No longer available on their web site. It's a long shot, because the problem it is meant to address is corrupted nvram with a G4 upgrade. But it might be worth a shot. Also, Sonnet's xtuneup (free download) I think has a procedure to create a special Starup Disk control panel for beige G3 upgraded to G4, which often causes a problem booting w/o the special panel. Though you don't have that machine, you might give it a try. |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 23, 2002 10:08 AM |
sprocketworks |
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WAIT!!! I had this exact same problem. It is not a XPF problem directly. Your NVRAM is kaputt. What is NVRAM? I have no idea - never heard of the stuff until after I rushed out to purchase a 9600 to replace my 'dead' Powerwave 120. This is an issue of the G4 card you have installed and some interaction with XPF and perhaps the video card (radeon 7000) - the machine goes dead. The solution, using XLR8s emergency disk (supplied on the CD with their upgrade cards) or I think Powelogix has the same thing on their CD. Just copy the the emergency disk items to a floppy, power up with the floppy inserted, wait about 2 minutes, the mahcine wil eventually boot off the floppy and then restart (or ask you to click OK). The machine will come back to life!! If you don't have the program, I can e-mail it to you. The hard part I had was finding another working machine with a CD and floppy. There are suggestions that there is another way to get it to reboot by removing hardware cards and proceesors and pressing the CUDA switch, but I could not get that to work. The NVRAM floppy worked perfectly. Doug sprocketworks@attbi.com |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 17, 2002 3:14 PM |
powderhaus |
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You said you cant reset the pram??? You hold cmd, option, p, r for three chimes. After that i think it needs a hard boot but i am not sure. |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 17, 2002 10:40 AM |
mitch707 |
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I'm running 10.2.2 on a 85oo/xlr8-G4-450. Here's what I do: 1.)Put monitor onto mother-board video out 2.)Use a bootable Apple CD drive, external SCSI works fine. 3.)With XPF: lnstall 10.0>10.1>Security Upgrd>Installer Upgrd (check apples web site for proper sequencing of upgrade path)>10.2>10.2.2>L2 cache enable. Will eat up most of a day-Good luck, Mitch |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 17, 2002 6:52 AM |
fred |
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Thanks for all the input, (a) I am trying 10.2 on a G3/400, PowerLogix update card, not on the original processor (b) I have read, and it has been suggested on this thread as well, that rebooting with the ORIGINAL CPU could help. I cannot try that because I do not have it anymore (should not have thrown it away when all was good with OS9 and 10.1) (c) I will try it again, but the machine does not even attempt to boot off a drive. It chimes, no video, and that's it. I left it like that for 10 minutes. (d) The very possible thing is that, while moving things around, I have damaged the motherboard or the CPU. I was grounded but may have forgotten at some point. I will try: to locate another CPU, to boot off floppy/CD and the option then COPR sequence suggested and keep the board posted on the results. Many thanks to all for your suggestions! Fred |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 17, 2002 6:40 AM |
kbata |
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Have you tried starting off an OS 9 CD after you zapped the PRAM? |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 16, 2002 10:26 PM |
mjoecups358 |
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Try holding down the option key when the power is turned on, and then immediately switch to Command-Option PR... Do you have any other CPU's? What kind of CPU is it? Marty |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 16, 2002 8:01 PM |
naturist |
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Fred, if you are trying to run 10.2 on a 604e processor, that is the problem. 10.2 requires a G3 or G4, unlike 10.1. Have you used a grounding wrist strap while you were jerking RAM DIMMs around? This time of year, static can kill RAM (and processors, too, for that matter) in a heartbeat. In fact, I just managed to kill a 64Mb DIMM even with a grounding wrist strap! It now reports itself to be a 16 Mb DIMM. bummer. Lastly, one thing I noticed with 10.1, although not with 10.2, was that installing 10.1 with the G4 upgrade always resulted in an apparently dead machine that wouldn't boot with anything. The solution for me was to reinstall the original 132 MHz 604 card for a boot into OS 9, and then return to the G4 (with appropriate hits on the CUDA switch w/ each swap). After the boot on the old processor, everything worked just fine. Not sure how that would play out if you tried to install 10.2 with a 604e, which it isn't supposed to run on. |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 16, 2002 6:51 PM |
fred |
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All right, (a) I was just joking about XPF being the culprit. Was just trying to get attention to my dead machine. XPF has nothing to do with it directly. Nothing is killed, it is just a problem of knowing what must be done. (b) Tried the CUDA switch. Removed battery and all and let it sit for more than 24 hours (c) Tried swapping RAM around, new one or old one, one at a time. Depending on the slot it's in it chimes or not. (d) Can't reset PRAM with keyboard. All I can do it restart the Mac and it chimes again. (e) Do not have any PCI card in the machine. It has onboard video, that I can't remove I think, or else how??? Thanks to everyone, including mjoecups358, for their ideas so far. I am afraid I need more ideas, though, as I tried all these already. Fred |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 16, 2002 6:26 PM |
powderhaus |
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I think thaqt the mostlikely problem is your RAM. You said that you switch it around. I would put one in at a time (also remove the "new" OWC chip-aparently they have problems sometimes, but i have 2 with no problems)after putting only one in at a time you can be sure that it is not your memory and that will narow this down. Also, would it be possable to remove all of you PCI cards with the exception of your Video card? If you have onboard video you can remove that too. I have had problems with the PRAM too. I found that after about 10-20 keyboard zaps and pram restore disk zaps (each alternating) it will come back. I don't think that you can download a pram restore disk nor need one with a Powerlogix card, but check i may be wrong. By the way it is to my understanding that on Macs it is impossable for 3rd party software to kill things inside your computer. |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 16, 2002 6:21 PM |
mjoecups358 |
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Another Xposfacto crybaby... |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 16, 2002 5:42 PM |
dreibel |
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a couple things you might also want to try: - remove the battery again, but this time unplug the computer and then press the power button for a few seconds - this will drain all leftover power from the motherboard. Then let it sit for awhile. - have you tried pressing the CUDA switch? This is a switch on the motherboard which will reset everything back to when the Mac came from the factory. It's located in different places on different Macs, it usually looks like a brown pencil eraser or a brown button on a square body. Try holding it down anywhere from 5-20 seconds. |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 16, 2002 5:13 PM |
fred |
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No emergency floppy... Is this something that can be downloaded as an image? I can probably find a mac with a floppy around... Fred |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 16, 2002 4:25 PM |
bralston |
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Do you happen to have either an XLR8 or Sonnet emergency floppy? This floppy has resurected my seeming dead 9600 numerous times. It appears to do a much better job of zapping PRAM then Apple's built-in method. -Ben www.os9forever.com |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 16, 2002 1:37 PM |
fred |
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Processor upgrade is a PowerLogix G3/400, that I have tried running at various frequencies/but speed. Depending on the settings, sometimes it chimes, sometimes not, with a tendency to chime more with lower settings... I have also tried quite a bit of RAM shuffling around, remove everythings except one of the 128 MB modules I bought recently from OWC. I have also tried plugging in and out a SIIG ATA card I have. Ain't got a video card to try, although I tried to follow the idea of changing something on the PCI bus (with the SIIG card). And for bjar1, I am not sure you want to follow my advice, given where it brought me :-) What I have read is remove everything non essential, including RAM and PCI cards, use on board video, slow your CPU, disable sleep and L2 cache, and pray... Fred |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 16, 2002 12:46 PM |
bjar1 |
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I hope this is the right place to post this question as I am stumped. I have used XPostFacto since I first found it (thank you Ryan) and this is the first time I have had a problem I couldn't solve thru stubborness and poking around. I have a stock 8600/200 604e processor with 304 MB of RAM (installed without any idea of how to interleave), an upgraded internal 18 gb IBM hard drive with four partitions (OS 10.1.5 installed and working and from which I am posting this message, OS9.1.2 installed and working, a partition onto which I want to install Jaguar and a partition onto which I want to install Darwin {I would also like help understanding how to do this and utilizing it}). I also have, via SCSI, an external ACOM (from acomdata.com) which is able to read and write CDs in both OS9 and OS10.1.5. When I try to install Jaguar the install appears to progress OK (it copies extensions {bootx, etc.} .ktext files and .strings to my target disk (a disk named "empty "), erased via OS9.1.2 and then ends with a blank screen and a "fat" non-blinking cursor (it looks like it is trying to restart in verbose). I am able, after a couple of tries to re-boot into the OS9.1 CD or into OS9.1.2 and at other times I to have to zap the Pram or re- boot, after a couple of tries, with "option" held down and/or re- start multiple times to get back into OS9.1.2. What are the options I can try: •do a complete re-install (I don't want to but will) •one of you showing me the way •live with OS10.1.5 until I can afford a compatible system? I should also say that the Jaguar installation I am trying to use is an Educators edition obtained from Apple. This is the first time I have asked a question like this. I hope to find help. If you have an answer please respond. Thank you. |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 16, 2002 12:43 PM |
swoup1213 |
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I've had similar problems with my 9500 when I first installed OSX, everything is working spectacular now. What I have done was to remove my video card, which was the ATI Radeon Mac edition, and installed my older card, IX Micro. Then it booted fine. After that I switched my video cards and everything works great. I hope this helps you. |
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RE: Another XPF victim... |
December, 16, 2002 12:01 PM |
negrotiator |
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what kind of processor upgrade do you have? |