Dead XLR8 Upgrade? |
November, 07, 2002 3:02 AM |
jwong |
Folks, After my most recent attempt to get 10.2 running on my 7300 with a 400 MHz XLR8 G4 upgrade, I found that I was unable to reboot into Mac OS 9. I tried zapping the PRAM, booting with command-shift-delete, removing the motherboard battery and pressing the CUDA button, and so on, but nothing worked. The machine refused to boot from my internal hard disk, the Mac OS 9 CD ROM, or even the XLR8 emergency disk; all I got was a blank, gray screen or if I was lucky, the flashing question mark. The only way I found to get things working again was to install my original 200 MHz 604e CPU card. With it in place, I was able to boot from the internal disk and use the machine normally, albeit slowly. Unfortunately, as soon as I replaced the G4 upgrade, the box reverted to its past bad behavior. Has anyone seen this kind of failure before? Is there any way to bring my G4 upgrade back to life? |
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RE: Dead XLR8 Upgrade? |
November, 23, 2002 2:36 AM |
jwong |
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Thanks again for the responses. I got a replacement XLR8 card, and things seem to be working now. |
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RE: Dead XLR8 Upgrade? |
November, 11, 2002 4:15 AM |
paul_findley |
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I tried 2 XLR8 450 G4s, and returned the second one just before they went belly up. I had to threaten to post my experiences with their G4 in a public forum, to get them to issue a refund (I guess they were still planning on surviving or they wouldn't have cared). Then a week later, they folded. I was having EXACTLY the same problem. OS X + G4, corrupted NVRAM, OS 9 + 604 card, fix, and then all over again. G3 in the carrier card is as solid as a Sherman tank. As for the G4, their tech support had the lame excuse that OS X was not supported. Then why did they have a link to xPostFacto, one might wonder? And they made sure everyone knew that their cache enabler worked under X. So they were kind of trying to get a free ride on X with xPostFacto, and not willing to do anything to ensure compatibility. That attitude and the Sonnet product announcements probably killed them. |
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RE: Dead XLR8 Upgrade? |
November, 08, 2002 12:51 PM |
marcush |
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Several attempts to get the procedure right and then several times after blowing out the system after having crashed for whatever reason. I will do everything I can to avoid resetting the PRAM. That's what has usually led me down this path. Sometimes a failed boot into OS9 will have the same effect if I have to force restart during a stalled OS9 boot. |
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RE: Dead XLR8 Upgrade? |
November, 08, 2002 2:18 AM |
jwong |
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Everything's in Mac OS 9--I still haven't got Jaguar working (and I blew away my 10.0.4 installation). I'm going to try reinstalling the software this evening. Back when you mentioned that you had to do this several times, did you mean to say that it took several attempts to rectify the problem? Thanks again for all the help. |
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RE: Dead XLR8 Upgrade? |
November, 07, 2002 10:42 PM |
marcush |
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Are you doing all of this in OSX or OS9? I'm assuming it is 9.x. For any of these steps to work you have to be booting to 9.x. If nothing else is working then I would reinstall the XLR8 software. |
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RE: Dead XLR8 Upgrade? |
November, 07, 2002 5:43 PM |
jwong |
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Hmm... Unfortunately, I've tried that a couple times: the XLR8 control panel comes up just fine and displays information about the currently installed processor (the 604e). When I pop the G4 back in and restart, I'm stuck back at the gray startup screen. |
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RE: Dead XLR8 Upgrade? |
November, 07, 2002 4:24 PM |
marcush |
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You should not have to reinstall the XLR8 cache software to restore the NVRAM contents. Simply launching the control panel should be enough. |
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RE: Dead XLR8 Upgrade? |
November, 07, 2002 1:34 PM |
jwong |
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Thanks for the responses! When you say that I need to reinstall the software/NVRAM patch, do I need to actually uninstall/reinstall the XLR8 software on my system? Is it enough to simply boot the system and open the XLR8 control panel? Am I missing something with respect to the emergency disk? The instructions in the README seemed pretty straightforward: put the disk in, let it boot and the machine will automatically restart. It actually seemed to work when the 604e was installed--I got a nice XLR8 graphic, and the system restarted normally. But when I reinstalled the G4, it refused to load. Thanks again. |
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RE: Dead XLR8 Upgrade? |
November, 07, 2002 11:13 AM |
marcush |
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I made a lot of postings to the guru's thread on the XLR8 upgrades in Power Tower Pros. There were at least two threads started. There is also a thread from the beginning of this forum on XLR8 upgrades. It is way back in the first few pages I think. Before upgrading to a Sonnet G4/800 I had an XLR8 G4/450 MPe SSE card and experienced the same trouble you are having. Though I did not use the XLR8 emergency disk, I did get the machine going again by stripping all but my Radeon Mac Edition and ACARD ATA/133 cards out of the machine and reinstalling the original processor. Once I got the machine to boot up in OS9 with the original processor once I would reinstall the XLR8 card and boot into OS9 one more time so that the NVRAM contents were restored and then OSX would boot again. I had to do this a few times and that was usually enough to get the machine to behave properly again. Part of the problem I eventually determined was two OWC DIMMS that did not play nice with the XLR8 G4. The XLR8 G4's are particularly sensitive to memory timing issues I suspect, because I never had any problems with G3 processors in XLR8 carrier cards. I've had two now, the original Carrier Ziff and the SSE card. The main piece of evidence that points to the XLR8 G4 for me is the fact that the very same DIMMS that were not compatible with the XLR8 G4 work fine with the Sonnet G4/800. |
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RE: Dead XLR8 Upgrade? |
November, 07, 2002 7:20 AM |
powderhaus |
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If you can boot with your other card you should be able to reinstall the same software (and probably the NVRAM patch that came with it.) |
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RE: Dead XLR8 Upgrade? |
November, 07, 2002 6:26 AM |
timjudym |
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There is a chance(90%) that you lost your XLR8 nvram files during your attempt at installing 10.2. The way to get them back is tricky, but totally doable if you follow the instructions with your XLR8 Emergency disk. There is a thread going now over at macguru's that discusses it in detail. |