im getting the dreaded 4 beep bad boot rom message emac 1ghz
Here's how it goes, i turn it on, some times you can hear the screen turning on, then the beeps, or no screen , but still get the beeps, but after several minutes of turning it off and on, it works fine, and sometimes it'll boot up on the first shot, Any help would be greatly appreciated, Thank you!
Perhaps I should have given you this link as well
What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode? (Mac OS X) Apart from other things it is a quick way of doing the equivalent of Disk Repair, something that may correct your ROM chip setting.
As it has started OK, that theory is looking good.
Now see if it restarts normally thereafter.
I agree with Chopsuey about Tiger not needing firmware updating, eMacs are fine re; firmware.
(Chops: he has already done a disk check from the Safeboot, but thanks for your input. It is welcome)
Hope you are happy on your return from Cancun and your eMac also.
Well I'm back from Cancun! And by the way if you weigh over 300lb you do NOT look good in a speedo! I ran disk utility, restarted and the hard drive went 😟 So down to the store for some torx head screwdrivers, whats the largest hard drive I can put in it? I've read some places up to 120gig, and then in other places I've seen people have good luck with 500gig drives...
Actually 500g ide are pretty easy to find, I've seen them on newegg.com and tigerdirect, But if you wanted there are sata to ide adapters, IF theres enough room to play with inside the computer
I have the exact same problem. And problem is, I can't get it to boot to get to the "safemode". I get the 4 beeps then it sits there and the light blinks on and off.
Could this be the battery as I read somewhere?
This is my moms computer and I don't have the specifics on what year exactly. I can tell you it's one of the first ones and I believe it to be 700 mhz. The copyright on the computer says 2003.
It used to boot a month ago. Although you had to do it a few times to get it to boot. It would do the beeping and then after a while I got the good tone. It would eventually. But not no more. Last thing I did to it was start up in target mode and ran both Disk Utilities and Disk Warrior 4 on it. DW 4 found no problems. Neither did the Disk Utility. Although it did fix some permissions.
Hey Bob,
This is from the service manual for the 700 - 800 .
BTW, post the info that's printed on the back of the optical drive door. It's the original specs on the eMac as it left the factory.
"Verify the battery is good before replacing modules. A drained battery may be indicative of a crashed Power Management Unit. Does the battery measure at least +3.5v? If not, replace the battery and reset the PMU."
Then about the PMU:
"The PMU (Power Management Unit) is a micro controller chip that controls all power functions for the computer. The PMU is a computer within a computer. It has memory, software, firmware, I/O, two crystals, and a CPU. Its function is to:
• Tell the computer to turn on, turn off, sleep, wake, idle, etc.
• Manage system resets from various commands.
• Maintain parameter RAM (PRAM).
• Manage the real-time clock.
Important: The PMU is very sensitive and touching the circuitry on the logic board can cause the PMU to crash. If the PMU crashes, the battery life goes from about five years to about two days if the PMU is not reset. Refer to the next topic, “Resetting the PMU on the Logic Board” for the
procedure."
and
"Many system problems can be resolved by resetting the PMU chip. The PMU reset button is located behind the user access door, refer to the graphic below."
it's next to the battery
"Unplug all cables, except the power cord, from the computer.
5 Touch a metal surface inside the computer. Then unplug the power cord.This helps protect the
computer from damage caused by electrostatic discharge. Important: To avoid electrostatic
discharge, always ground yourself by touching metal before you touch any parts or install components
inside the computer. To avoid generating static electricity, do not walk around the room until you have
finished the procedure and closed the computer.
6 Press the PMU reset button (shown below) once and then proceed to step 7. Do NOT press the
PMU reset button a second time because it could crash the PMU chip.
7 WAIT ten seconds before connecting the power cord and powering the computer on. If the
computer powers on, go to the next step. If the computer does not power on, there is something
else wrong with the computer, refer to the symptom/cure, “No Power” in this chapter."
Richard
Did you ever find a solution to this problem? I've run into 6 at one of the schools in my district with this issue. 3 of them were solved by swapping the RAM (each has 2 sticks of 256 MB) to the other slot in the machine (This probably just reseated the RAM, so it was not necessary to switch slots) and resetting the PMU. The other 3 were not fixed by doing this. Turns out, they each had a bad stick of RAM. As soon as I replaced the bad stick and reset the PRAM, the machines booted up fine.
