XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
August, 09, 2002 11:25 AM |
webmaster814 |
Well my 9600 is dead because of XPOSTFACTO... now I need to buy a used machine.... the screen stays black, and nothing else happens... Michael |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
November, 02, 2002 11:04 PM |
swoup1213 |
. |
My first post here. I sometimes encounter the same problem with my 9500, usually when I'm experimenting with extensions or more recently (today) when I trashed the preferences for the finder and system. Chimes but not video. Attempted all those fixes with no results in the past but found an answer which works consistently for me. I have a Radeon Mac Edition card installed. I remove that card and replace it with my older IXMicro Ultimate Rez. The machine starts up normally once again and my panic is over :) Keith |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
November, 01, 2002 4:06 PM |
mjoecups358 |
. |
My 9600 works fine (350) I meant to type. |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
November, 01, 2002 4:05 PM |
mjoecups358 |
. |
My 9600 worms fine (350), Also I have seen the "dead" behaviour in both my Powerwave and Powertower pro. Usually swapping in a different CPU and/or video card fixes/revives it. Also if I install My powerlogix G4 upgrade and use there boot floppy that fixes it also. So, to summerize. Not dead. Not 9600 specific. |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
November, 01, 2002 1:58 PM |
nct |
. |
For what it's worth, all my Black screen (and frequent hang,) problems went away when I emptied the bottom 3 PCI slots on my 9600 (200MP). I am now running with a Sonnet 800Mhz, 320MB interlaced and (in order from the top,) a Rage Pro Orion, a Adaptec FW card w/ 2 drives on it, and an Apple 10/100 card. It has been rock solid stable for about a week, and it always restarts. Before then, black screens were 100% occuring whenever the computer was powered off. I do miss my USB trackball, but not enough to give up OSX. |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
November, 01, 2002 11:22 AM |
gchron |
. |
Well I had the same problem you have here. I tried all the above stuff. To remove the battary and power of the board and wait for NVRAM to clean. Also I tried the command option p r. Nothing worked. I also did not had set up the standard input and output for the OF. I was very dissaponted. But after some research I found that. The NVRAM can empty if someone use an OLD empty battary and place it upside down to its place. IMPORTANT this should be done when the board is disconected from all the periferals memory the power suply etc. This emtied the NVRAM and the computer started with no problems to OS9, Also I noted and some minor fixes to the hole boot process. I hope that this could help some people. PLEASE use it as a last resort (When you are ready to trash the board) - It my work |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
October, 27, 2002 1:03 AM |
drc |
. |
Diditgo: I think what you are seeing is the dual monitor capability of the Radeon 7000. I'm running two monitors off one the VGA port shows up as ATI A & the DVI port (with the supplied adapter) is ATI B. |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
October, 26, 2002 10:24 PM |
diditgo |
. |
Hi Jonathan, I have had the problem on and off as well. One thing I did was use the open firmware in the file menu to choose the keyboard as input and the Monitor as output. The monitor choice gets a little confusing because there is a choice for my original video card in my 9600 and then two choices for ATI (strange, because I only have a radeon 7000, the 7000 did replace my old ati xclaim vr, so maybe xpf is still picking this up from somwhere deep inside?) Any way....if by chance you pick the wrong out put as I did, this is one of the reasons I spent a week pulling all my cards and the battery out to get my computer to boot at all. Happy to say I am currently running 10.2.1 on my 9600/300 upgraded with a sonnet 800 and new radeon 7000 video card, on a 10,000rpm drive powered by a inito miles uw scsi pci card. It gives my 867 G4 a close run for the money (: Good luck |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
October, 26, 2002 2:06 PM |
jcorbett |
. |
I am wondering if anyone has come up with a definitive solution for the "Black Screen of Death". My 9600 with Newer G3 400 has 10.1.5 installed and it works fine but only ONCE after an XPF restart. I am only able to boot into OS X after my initial "Install Extensions" from the XPF control panel. Once I Shut Down or Restart from within OS X, my monitors drop the signal and remain blacked out. I have to force start and command-option-shift-delete to start from one of my two OS 9 drives. (Luckily, I don't have to yank out PCI cards and pull the battery, etc) If I use the XPF control panel to restart in OS X, I get the blacked out screens again. So, the only times I get to use OS X are when I upgrade the XPF control panel and use that upgrade for the first time. Can anyone tell me how I can stabilize the OS X video settings while still in OS X? The OS X Display controls work fine, they give me the resolutions I want - 1152 X 870 on both monitors. But as soon as I leave OS X I can't get any signal. I have exhausted 2.2.3 but I am about to install 2.2.4 so I have only two chances (two OS 9's-worth) to start 10.1.5 and get the monitor signals to "stick". TIA, Jonathan |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
September, 13, 2002 12:08 PM |
marcush |
. |
I'd like to follow up that this problem can happen fairly easilly with a G4 upgrade. Believe it or not, it happened to me again last night. I have a Pioneer DVR-104 that I installed internally to see if I would be able to boot from it. This is another story but allow me to digress for a moment. In the case of a Power Tower Pro at least, this is not possible with a retail drive. It is seen as a SCSI device in OS9.x.x but is not recognized at all in OSX attached to an ACARD IDE card. Toast has no idea it is there. I had hoped that if it was recognized I would be able to reinstall OS X and get iDVD and the DVD player installed. No such luck. Back to the main point. When I tried to boot an OS9 install CD the machine hung during the boot so I shut down. When I started up I once again enountered the problem that was the source of so much unpleasantness during the previous 6 days. I was confident of my solution so last night I unplugged the machine removed the PRAM battery before going to bed. This morning before work I removed all of my PCI cards except for the Radeon and moved it to the first slot. I next plugged in power to my remaining SCSI disk, inserted my G4 NVRAM Rescue disc and powered on. The machine booted from the floppy, restoring the NVRAM contents and then I shut down and immediately powered up again. Video came back on and I was back in business. |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
September, 12, 2002 11:21 PM |
marcush |
. |
Your 9600 is not dead! I just resolved the same issue with my Power Tower Pro last night. Read about it on the "800 Mhz" thread. Basically, your machine has lost it's NVRAM settings. Several people have mentioned various fixes that work for various situations, but yours is identical to mine. Read on. This past Saturday I installed a new Sonnet G4 800 daughter card. I had the machine running in OS 9.2.2 while I was trying to see if I could continue to use Power Logix Cache Profiler. I had donwloaded the L3 Cache Enabler init and had rebooted a number of times (can't remember how many) trying to get the extensions to load. I'd also caused a number of crashes. One time the machine froze and I just turned it off cold. After that it would not boot. I would get the startup chime, the drives would spin-up and the monitor sense light would come on for about 5-10 seconds and then go back to amber. The monitor would never light up, and the floppy drive didn't work for booting ( or so I believed). I tried every trick I knew: long CUDA resets (60+ seconds), removing the PRAM battery, and many attempts at zapping the PRAM. This last thing was the most alarming because it would not work. I was not getting far enough along in the boot process to be able to zap the PRAM. I was almost convinced that the logic board was dead. Yesterday, a guy named Stephen got the gears turning in my head when he suggested that I try the Sonnet NVRAM rescue disc. My card did not come with one but he mailed a disk image to me that got me up and running. I also got Sonnet to send me one too. You said that you have an XLR8 upgrade. Is it a G4? Even if it is not the XLR8 software CD has a rescue disc image that you can use to restore your machine's NVRAM. The trick for me was to strip the machine down to just my Radeon card and a SCSI drive. I moved the card from the 5th slot up to the 1st slot. I don't know if that alone is what did it but since I had an ACARD IDE adapter for my boot drive I thought that that might be part of the problem. To bring this story to a close, it was either just moving the Radeon to a different slot or in combination with the SCSI drive that reset the machine and allowed me to boot off of the floppy. Before that the floppy never started reading anything I put into it. On the first boot off of the floppy I did not get video. I was encouraged enough that the floppy was booting that I waited until the drive had stopped reading the floppy to warm reboot the computer. This time the video came back and I've been up and running since about 11:30 last night. It took patience and a lot of trading posts but I brought my trusty Power Tower Pro back to life. Now you get to skip over all that unpleasantness and get back to work. |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
September, 12, 2002 9:21 PM |
jcorbett |
. |
I said I'd report back on each new XPF and my 9600/200MP upgraded with G3 400. I just tried 2.2.2. I am at this moment writing to the forum from OS 10.1.5. The newest XPF worked well. I trashed earlier versions on both my other 9.1 systems and loaded 2.2.2. I used "Install Extensions" and simply hit "Restart". My dual screens went through the same process I mentioned in my earlier post: dropped signals, one monitor finally showing a grayed out Apple logo. At this point I was bracing for the Black Screen again. But, the difference was that the Mac started scrolling command line bootup procedures. (I had never seen this UNIX-like behaviour before). But the result was a Mac desktop and the old 10.1.5 that I had briefly had. It even kept the monitor resolutions for both screens. Since I have had both 10.1 and 10.1.5 running on this Mac for short periods over the last month, I'm not convinced that 2.2.2 is the answer to the 9600's problems. But I thought I would report the good news to others. I have taken digital photos of the boot process and, for Michael's sake, I took a pic of the Mac box and one of the monitors running OS X. It's true that it's been a nasty (Microsoft-like) experience getting OS X to work on the 9600 but it can be done. I'll report back if things go wrong yet again. Jonathan |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
September, 12, 2002 5:44 PM |
pboling |
. |
I read through this thread. I decided I would do an experiment, and kill my 9600. Then I'll see if I can get it to work again. I'm starting off with pretty bad odds, since nothing in my machine is factory except for the CPU,which is 200mhz 604e, and the floppy drive, all the factory components are 2 hours away at my Dad's house. I have an ATI Radeon 7000, Tempo Trio ATA card driving 120GB hard drive in 8 partitions, the 9.1 system I have been using is in the 3rd partition at about the 25th GB, and I told XPost Facto to install in the 4th Partition at about the 35th GB. The Tempo Trio is also driving an ATA CDRW drive. I have 512MB interleaved memory, and no working SCSI drives to attach to the internal SCSI chain. I ran XPOSTFacto. It installed a bunch of files. The machine turned off, then came back on. Flashing disk screen. It didn't want to start up from the 10.0.3 CD in the drive. So I tried to restart it a bunch of times. I always get a flashing disk upon restart. So I took out the batterry (which is brand new), the Radeon 7000, and I would take out the Tempo Trio, but it is driving my CDROM, and I wouldn't be able to load from my MacOS 9 CD. Here goes Nuthin! |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
September, 12, 2002 9:00 AM |
speedy |
. |
I would like to say that I've been using OS X fine on my 9600 with *very* good results. I use both a Radeon Mac Original and Radeon 7000, and I'm willing to bet some of the problems people have are due to these cards. Sometimes, I've noticed that sometimes during a boot, the screen will never (or atleast take a really really long time) to sync up. Usually what I do is do the 3 finger restart, wait around 10 - 15 seconds, and if there is nothing, doing the 3 finger restart again (and maybe again), in order to get the video card working. If you pull a Radeon card out, and boot, and you hear drive activity, etc, I let it boot up into OS 9 - wait till its done - hit the shutdown button, wait for it to beep, hit return, let the 9600 power off, and insert the Radeon card again. Usually I have to do this after zapping the PRAM (thus I advoid zapping PRAM and if nothing else, turn off autobooting so I can control where the 9600 boots up into BOOT vs BYE -- I guess it helps if your OS9 partition/drive is before your OS X partition). When the NVRAM is dorked, it also seems to help if I have the original IMS TwinTurbo card (in a slot above maybe?) the Radeon(s). Usually the TwinTurbo boots the first try (better OF boot/init code in its ROM?) while the Radeon card(s) stay out of sync, I then reboot, and the Radeon then work, and I take out the TwinTurbo. XPF works just fine on the 9600, I think the problem is with picky upgrades that are super sensitive to begin with. And the 9600 had its own 'issues' itself, with PCI slots and such, although Sonnet cards seem to get around this (I did seem to have *some* problems (hard lockups) with my PowerLogix card) Anyway, I just want to say *Thanks* to Ryan, and that XPF works ... even on a 9600 (w/ lots of addons) =) |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
September, 12, 2002 7:58 AM |
jcorbett |
. |
Hi, I'm still wrestling with a 9600/200MP with Newer G3 400. Prior to OS 10.1.5 I went through the horrific pulling of all PCI cards, CUDA and battery yank. (I did not have to use my old 604e card, however, to resurrect the Mac). The nastiest aspect of the black screen was that I could not zap the PRAM from the keyboard. That was terrifying but forced me to go to the final trick - pulling the battery. I have managed to load 10.1.5 on the Mac but having updated much of the software using Apple's Software Updater, reboot brought me back to the wonderful Black Screen(s). I have come close to raising 10.1.5 using XPF - I "Install Extensions" before each attempt to Restart in OS X and this is what happens: Chimes of restart Second monitor drops signal Main monitor gets a gray screen with a black Apple logo centred and a grayed spinning cursor upper left of the screen for 30 seconds. Main monitor suddenly drops signal. Fortunately, although I cannot keyboard restart, I can press the power button on the 9600's faceplate and use Command-Option- Shift-Delete to get back flawlessly to either one of two other drives running OS 9. When I have had both 10.1 and 10.1.5 running on the 9600, they had been fast enough and stable. I would like to run OS X but, for now, I'm lying low until Ryan or some other clever programmer can tweak XPF. With each successive update of XPF, I'll give another try to booting up my OS 10.1.5 volume. I'll report success/failure to this thread. Jon |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
August, 11, 2002 11:35 AM |
blair.holtby |
. |
OSXguru: Don't despair, everyone should go into this with eyes open. I got my 9600/350 up and running again by removing the battery for 6 hours, confirming that the battery is up to nominal voltage, pressing the red button for the duration of a couple of Dust Rhino songs (Irish pub rock on MP3), booting from OS9.1 CD, doing a clean install and reinstalling essential software one by one. Runs again and stable!!!! Is it possible that 9600 machines have a super capacitor that keeps NVRAM charged for much longer than other models??? Now that I know that I can recover the machine I'm going to give xpfb16 one more go. If it works great, if not then I'll redouble my efforts to save enought coin to get that genuine G4 iMac. |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
August, 11, 2002 10:59 AM |
richard |
. |
>I know it is not a hardware problem smart ass. If it is not a hardware problem, then it is transient, not permanent. 1. Unplug your computer. 2. Remove the battery. 3. Remove the processor upgrade, and hold down the CUDA switch for 30 seconds. 4. Remove the video cards and any other PCI cards. 5. Leave for 24 hours (unplugged, battery out). 6. Put the battery back and in, and plug the computer back in. 7. Put in your *original CPU* [important]. 8. Start up from OS9 CD. If that doesn't work, I'll be very surprised. |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
August, 11, 2002 7:07 AM |
webmaster814 |
. |
I'll try it again. But, I am sure XPOSTFACTO killed my 9600. |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
August, 11, 2002 1:01 AM |
willschou1 |
. |
I am really sorry your machine isn't working. However my work with OSX for an extended period of time tells me it isn't "Dead"! While working to get Jaguar to run on my UMax 700 I looked back at some old records. I see I did my first install of OSX dv3 on June 27,2000! I was on my own. There was no support group like this and no OSX Gurus. I had 'System Disk' which came with it and hacked it to hell to get it to run. But this was no easy job. As the machines running it were the Apple 7300,7600,8500,8600,9500 and 9600. While the UMAX J700/S900 was closest to the Apple 8500 it didn't have any on board video. It also has a PCI bridge chip setup which no other machines ever used. So If I set it like a 8500 the install failed when it didn't find the on board video. If I set it like a 9600 machine it failed when it got to the pci bridge chips....But I kept at it and got it to run! It took like 2 weeks working like a crazy person day and night. There were days when I was looking at used apple machines checking prices and wondering should I get the 7300 or 7600 or one with no video built in. I was sure the machine was dead for days at a time! Somehow I always got the machine to startup. I wasn't always sure what had worked. However I am sure from my experiences that your machine could only be dead if you broke something while taking it apart and putting it back together. The chance that XPF killed your machine are just about Zero i'd say! A recap of what works for me with "The Black Screen of Death" 1. Remove the battery 2.Unplug the machine 3.let it set for 12 + min ( Yes this is enough a full 10 min is enough in fact) I was doing this 4 times an hour sometimes and really got down what it took to restart the machine. 4. The trick is to hold down the cuda for a full 30 sec or maybe even 60 sec then put the battery back in and push the cuda , plug it in and push the cuda one more time and way it goes every time on a UMAX J700/S900! The time could vary on a different machine but at first i was going over night until I learned the trick of unpluging and the cuda. I have heard that some people need to use the 604 cpu to reset the machine maybe so or maybe it was an accident that it worked??? It always pays to keep those cpu's and video cards when you upgrade! So anyway I am sure that if I had your machine in front of me I could get it to startup. Unless hardware has somehow been broken when taking apart and putting back together. Best of luck. Will Schoumaker |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
August, 11, 2002 12:16 AM |
powderhaus |
. |
Michael, I had the same problem with my Powerwave 120 (8500 Clone) and our UMAX J700 (also an 8500 clone). As it turned out it took me quite a while to revive the machine, and it has happened twice. The main issue is something with the NVRAM/PRAM that on a failed installation of OSX leaves the OS9 system unable to start up. The key to really resetting the PRAM is shutting the computer off, removing the battery noted in earlier posts and unplugging the machine. I pressed the 'cuda button with the machine unplugged and the battery out. I left it unplugged for 24 hours, not 12 minutes. There is a capacitor in the system that needs to be fully discharged to get the PRAM back to its original state. Even after all that, the units took a few start up attempts, as the first time the monitor came on, it showed garbled junk and black and white lines. The next time a half screen showed up, and then it really started, but all green so I had to reset the color in the monitor control panel. Don't give up, it is a PRAM issue and the PRAM can be reset if you are patient. I actuall gave up and let the thing sit for a day and then tried again and got the results noted above. I would have gladly bought your 9600 for $100 at the time, as I was sure my machine was dead. Also, some processor upgrades come with a PRAM restore floppy disc. Give that a try as it works on the UMAX 700 with its G4 upgrade card. Also, if you have the option to use the original video card or plug in spot on your machine, give that a try too. I had a series of what seemed like failures with the IXMicro Ultimate Rez card and put the old IXMicro twin turbo card in, which seemed to work better in the moments of restoring the machine to functionality. I also had some bizzare stuff happen to my hard drive, which made the system files corrupt. With two computers we were able to get the hard drives out and into the other, working unit to check them and repair the system files. Since both were equipped with non-Apple endorsed CD-ROM drives, they do not start up on OS9 CD's from Apple. You may be able to use your CD-ROM to boot though. Anyway, I'll say it again, be patient the machine is not dead, it just forgot what it is. Good luck, Jim |
. |
Is XPostFacto a killer? |
August, 10, 2002 11:28 PM |
OSXGuru |
. |
Reading this thread, I had to think back to how nervous I was a little over a year ago, when I first posted the instructions for getting Mac OS X to run on unsupported machines. I really didn't know whether following the instructions might do harm in some cases, and how people would react when it did. Things turned out pretty well on the whole. There have been a handful of cases where people have had some significant problems, but they have been pretty gracious when that has happened. And the problems have generally been fixable (but you never know what you might not be hearing about). In theory, it ought to be possible to boot an apparently dead system by making sure the NVRAM has been thoroughly cleared, putting in the original processor card, and making sure the motherboard battery has a good charge. The most dangerous thing that XPostFacto does is write a variety of settings to NVRAM which affect a very early part of the boot process. Clearing NVRAM should restore it to a useable state if things go wrong. However, because of the speculative processing issue with G4 upgrade cards (and G3 cards, to a lesser extent), there are cases in which it is necessary to reinstall the original processor after NVRAM is cleared. But I imagine that this theory is not wholly satisfying to those for whom it has not worked. I have never really known what I would say if XPostFacto were ever to cause irreparable harm (and I'm not sure what to say now, either). I certainly can't say that it is impossible--I don't know that for sure. I guess I have tried to give people the tools needed to understand what is going on--that was one reason it seemed important to me to make XPostFacto an open-source application. So here's the bottom line: using XPostFacto can cause some significant frustration. I have tried to be pretty open about that possibility. I hope that there is a way out of the problems in every case, but I can't guarantee it. I wish I could. |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
August, 10, 2002 9:52 PM |
webmaster814 |
. |
Ben, Sold. Email me: webmaster@minux.zzn.com |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
August, 10, 2002 9:03 PM |
bralston |
. |
Speaking from a background in electrical engineering and software development, I simply can't agree that a peice of software can ruin a peice of hardware to that degree. I have been using XpostFacto on my 9600 for well over a year now, and have never experienced that sort of problem. I am sympathetic to your problem, but I'm convinced that we'll find a logical solution. I have a spare 233mhz 604e processor that I would be willing to send you if you wanted to try replacing the CPU. And if not, i'd be willing to take your 9600 off your hands for your asking price, becuase I am convinced that I could fix it. -Ben |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
August, 10, 2002 8:49 PM |
webmaster814 |
. |
Blair, I would agree with you. I recall that someone esle with a 9600 had the same problem that we are having (have had). Your right, Ryan should remove the 9600 from the list. Because, I know I am not alone when I say that flushing $200.00 (current market price of a base 9600) down the toilet is a complete waist of money, especially if you do not get anything but a broken beige box. This problem should be addressed, or at the minummum people should be aware of this problem. And like you said, no one appreciates smart ass comments from pricks (pardon my french) about a problem that they have note a clue about. Michael |
. |
RE: XPOSTFACTO Killed My 9600: |
August, 10, 2002 5:42 PM |
blair.holtby |
. |
Hi Michael: My sympathies. Something very similar has happened to me. Although my machine will start up in OS9 it has become unstable and Norton diagnostics indicate that there is something wrong with the CPU. I've tried everything too and confirmed that all of the hardware that can be moved to another machine works fine. So reluctantly I've oncluded, event in the face of smart ass comments from the peanut gallery, that XPF or more likely OSX does something that causes electrical damage to the 604e CPU in the 9600. My advice to the guru is to remove the 9600 from the list of supported machines until we're exposed as idiots and the problems are resolved. Blair |
|
|