OS X Boot Problem with Sonnet G4/700 |
July, 08, 2003 4:32 PM |
h.gegenfurtner |
Hello there! Last Friday, I've upgraded my good old PowerMac 7500 from Crescendo G3/400 to G4/700. (It has got 768 MB of fresh OWC memory now.) While the upgrade card works fine when booting into Mac OS 9.1, I am not able to re-boot into my Mac OS X 10.2.6 volume, an internal 9GB IBM-DNES SCSI drive with a single partition. Even before the grey Apple logo appears, there is an endless error message loop saying: Can't OPEN: scsi-int @6:6 (which is my Mac OS X drive). After downgrading to Crescendo G3/400 again, there is no problem rebooting into this volume. Experimenting with Throttle settings didn't help. Neither did a warm reboot at the error message. And I have no idea how to locate and ground the "disk unit attention jumper". There are 25 pin pairs looking quite similar ;-) Neal from Sonnet suggested my 9 GB partition might be 1 GB too large so that some contents required at boottime may have got out of scope, which sounds reasonable to me; but Ryan writes that this limitation to the first 8 GBs applies to ATA drive only - i.e., not to SCSI drives!? So, has anyone got another idea what I might try to get my OS X drive booting with my new G4/700!? Of course, Firewire support in XPF 3.0 should be a solution to this problem. That's one of the reason why I finally registered now. Thank you so much, Ryan, for your work! Harald from Hamburg |
. |
RE: OS X Boot Problem with Sonnet G4/700 |
August, 12, 2003 12:21 PM |
dklaus |
. |
> Oops ... what ARE the necessary OS X updates for the Sonnet G4 !? You need to download and run Sonnet's PCI X Tune-Up (now ver 1.2.7). This must be done in OS X prior to installing the G4 card. Since I just went through this, I had done extensive reading and found several people that recomended the following: Boot OS X Run Sonnet's PCI X Tune-Up Reboot into OS 9.1 Run XPF, chose reinstall extensions and install - from menu items. Shutdown and swap processors Boot OS 9.1 then use XPF to boot X. This worked very well for me, as I am now running with no problems. I will add the first time you boot OS X after the re-install it takes a very long time to start-up. I'm assuming it is re-linking the OS at some level. The next boot will proceed at a normal speed. |
. |
RE: Boot Problem Sonnet G4/700 |
July, 13, 2003 3:02 PM |
h.gegenfurtner |
. |
Thanks, gregoryy, for your comments! >Did you format the IBM with Disk Utility or something else? Drive Setup 2.07 >would be one choice ... Yes, must have been Drive Setup, but I don't recall the version. >How do you install the necessary OS X updates for the Sonnet G4, >or do you have to boot first, update later for cache support etc? Oops ... what ARE the necessary OS X updates for the Sonnet G4 !? >Are pram or nvram settings stored on the boot volume and zapping pram >you lose those settings? Another good question. I tried zapping PRAM several times but that brought me back to OS 9.1 where I immediately fixed settings like date & time ... >Besides XPF 2.2 what do you use to select the startup system? Nothing else, so far. ================================== Thanks, nick.ashton, for the dnesjum.htm link. This is something I would try if anything else failed. ================================== chibi_delenn and pwrmactx: thanks for your comments! |
. |
RE: OS X Boot Problem with Sonnet G4/700 |
July, 10, 2003 2:53 PM |
chibi_delenn |
. |
I'm afraid Neal has been smoking some pretty damned good stuff lately. SCSI drives aren't limited in partition size like ATA drives are in OldWorld macs. The drive's firmware can indeed be a problem, although it seems highly unlikely, as downgrading from the newer Sonnet G4 solves the problem. It is more likely that Sonnet failed to do any real testing on their G4/700 and G4/800 cards with any viable PCI configurations. I too had a G4/800 which failed after two days. It almost caused the Radeon (R7200) card to fry itself! The Radeon card, which was not next to the CPU slot at the time, began heating up *really* fast, and was far hotter than with my G3/400 installed. After two days, the G4/800 showed gliteches and artifacts in ANY 3D app or game. Downgrading to my XLR8 CarrierZIF MPe w/ G3/400 in it fixed that. UT (not 2k3), and any UT engine games would crash on startup after the first two days with the G4/800. But simply putting the G3/400 back let me run them fine (albeit much less smoothly). It would appear that the G4/x00 cards from Sonnet just aren't ready for prime time. I've even been to Fry's down here, and *every single one* of the G4/700 and G4/800 Sonnet CPUs showed a return sticker on them. Hell, Sonnet's 4.5 firmware "Fix" for large HDs on the Tempo Trio, which was SUPPOSED to let me boot OS X off my 200 GB HD w/ 8 MB Cache, mysteriously fails to work. The only change I see so far is a just barely shorter firmware name, and less stability in the ATAPI department (DVD-ROM now freezes OS X if anything is inserted into it). It would be nice if a good G4 that was >450 Mhz could be used in my mac, that's for sure. But a Sonnet CPU I will not buy. Not again. Oh, and I bought a second G4/800 to try from Fry's right after I returend the first to OWC (had to go to the BBB to get THAT through, ugh). My mac wouldn't even boot, AT ALL, with the second G4/800 in it, regardless of whether or not I took out all the PCI cards. I won't fault Neal for bad hardware design. That he can't really control. But obviously somebody at Sonnet isn't doing their job, or at least not doing it very well. Let's hope PL's upgrades are worth it... - Chibi Delennâ„¢ |
. |
RE: OS X Boot Problem with Sonnet G4/700 |
July, 10, 2003 9:48 AM |
pwrmactx |
. |
Had the same problem with my 9600 and a Sonnet G4 800 mhz. Switching from 10mb to 5mb internal port may do the trick... But, if not too late, return the Sonnet Card. Sonnet cards are nortorious for being unstable and unreliable. May I suggest a PowerLogix 800Mhz/800 512K that will be released in a few weeks... Jim |
. |
RE: OS X Boot Problem with Sonnet G4/700 |
July, 09, 2003 7:01 AM |
nick.ashton |
. |
If you want to try disabling unit attention here is a page detailing the jumper settings for your drive http://www.hgst.com/hdd/support/dnes/dnesjum.htm |
. |
Sonnet G4/700 IBM 9GB |
July, 09, 2003 6:19 AM |
gregoryy |
. |
Someone ought to send Neal... your SCSI is fine. The drive's firmware could actually be a factor. That drive had as I recall a problem when used off an Adaptec card. ATA might be easier. Are you using the native FAST SCSI internal bus? I was able to use the narrow bus on ATTO PSCd card (20MB/s) but not the wide channel on that same card. I've used 18GB SCSI drives on both narrow and wide controllers in 7300 w/o trouble. Did you format the IBM with Disk Utility or something else? Drive Setup 2.07 would be one choice, and HDST 3.5 the only other really good choice I think. How do you install the necessary OS X updates for the Sonnet G4, or do you have to boot first, update later for cache support etc? Are pram or nvram settings stored on the boot volume and zapping pram you lose those settings? Besides XPF 2.2 what do you use to select the startup system? System Disk 3.3.1? |
|
|