dual 1GHz MDD won't boot OS X

Question

dual 1GHz MDD won't boot OS X

I've got a dual 1GHz MDD G4 that is having some boot issues. It WILL:

-work in target disk mode (so was able to copy all the data off)
-boot in single-user mode
-boot a 9.2.1 install disk (but does not see the hard drive when I do this, and the installer says in won't run on this machine)

It will NOT:

-boot from the internal hard drive (10.4.3 before the system crashed)
-boot from the softawre resore disk (10.2.4) that came with the system.
-boot from a tiger install disk (10.4.3)

In all the OS X boot attempts, I get the grey screen with the apple and spinning gear going forever. Also, I can use the option key at power-up to see the hard drive or any CD or DVD in the drive and choose one to boot from. Zapping the Pram seems to have no effect.

Addtional info: when I tried to boot in verbose mode, I saw Bus errors or segmentation faults for syslogd, xgridagentd, and mDNSResponder. Also, in single-user mode, I see malloc errors with many commands (like ls and man).

I have not yet hit the PMU reset on the motherboard.

It appears that this system crashed back in January - late at night on a weekend. After that crash, it got progressively slower until last week when it would not boot. I found the log file from the crash and it appears to have taken 10 minutes (!!!) from the first problem in the log file until the system completely crashed.

I'm really not sure at this point whether this is a hardware or software issue???

Any ideas?

dual 1GHz MDD Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Posted on Apr 6, 2006 3:39 PM

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Answer 1

Apr 6, 2006 6:48 PM in response to power mac user

Is there any available space left on the hard drive? I vaguely remember a similar sounding problem where a user's machine kept failing the way you describe because it kept generating these enormous crash logs that would fill up all of the remaining space on the hard drive, rendering the machine useless.

Will the machine boot from an external firewire drive?

Welcome to the forum,

Dan

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Answer 2

Apr 6, 2006 8:40 PM in response to Daniel Sherman

There is plenty of space on the hard drive - about 55GB is used on the 80GB hard drive. I don't have an external firewire HD to boot from, unless my laptop in disk mode will do the trick.

One more think I forgot to mention is that the Crash in January seems to have generated some files with corrupt names - even some whole directory paths. The names are corrupted with letter substitutions - e.g. normal charcters are replaced by caracters with accent marks.

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Answer 3

Apr 6, 2006 11:01 PM in response to power mac user

Try booting to the OS 9 disk and mounting the drive via Drive Setup.

Try resetting the PMU, and booting to the Tiger install disk. If successful, run DU from the Tiger install disk.

Try running DU via TDM from the laptop.

Gary

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Answer 4

Apr 7, 2006 12:49 AM in response to power mac user

Hi,

I'm seeing almost exactly the same problem with my dual-1.25 MDD. It will not boot into OS X at all, not even from CD. OS 9 works fine, as does target disk mode. Single user mode doesn't work for me.

In my case there were no crashes or stability problems that preceded this. I just went to start up tonight and got the infinite spinning gear (eventually the gray Apple was replaced by a circle with a line through it).

Booting into verbose mode showed only a few lines of text, among them these errors:

AppleCPUThermo::readI2c fails on 1 of 1 167
AppleCPUThermo::start failed to initialize DS1775!
ApplePlatformExpert::getGMTTimeOfDay can not provide time of day RTC did not show up

AppleFan::Failed to find CPU Thermistor driver!

And finally it just printed "Still waiting for root device" again and again every minute or so.

I also tried zapping PRAM to no avail.

Interestingly, I was able to get a successful boot into OS X immediately after using target disk mode. Only once though; when I shut down and tried to start up, the gear just spun forever again.

I'm going to borrow a multimeter from work tomorrow to check the motherboard battery, and I'll try resetting the PMU. I'll post back with the results.

-Robb

Dual-1.25 GHz MDD G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

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Answer 5

Apr 7, 2006 6:53 AM in response to Majordadusma

Drive setup does not see the drive when I boot on the OS 9 disk - the drive just isn't there.

I also tried running DU on the laptop with the MDD in TDM, and found no problems. However, the laptop only has 10.2 on it. I may repeat using another desktop that has 10.4.

resetting the PMU sounds like the only thing left to try. I will also see if I can get my hands on a meter to check the battery - As I recall, we got this MDD shortly after they came out. Our group has another 1GHz DP we got a few months earlier that is a QS.

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Answer 6

Apr 7, 2006 6:57 AM in response to The Lab Guy

Have you looked at this page:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106464

There are lots of suggestions of things to try there. Unfortunately, they haven't helped me so far. However, I haven't tried all of them because I noticed the page says it is for 10.3.9 and EARLIER. Is there an equivalent page for 10.4? I haven't been able to find one yet.

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Answer 7

Apr 7, 2006 7:06 AM in response to power mac user

power mac user,

Welcome to Discussions.

OK, the PMG4 dual 1GHz MDD came with OS9.2.2 installed. I'm surprised it managed to boot from the OS9.2.1 install disk, but I have heard this story before.
The PMG4 doesn't boot from the restore disks, they just have an installer application on them that has to be run whilst booted from hard disk. The PMG4 also came with OSX 10.2 and OS9.2.2 INSTALL disks, if you have them, try them.

'malloc' is of course a C command to allocate memory to a program for variables. If it's failing, I suspect you have issues with the memory in the PMG4. If you have purchased memory for the PMG4 - you have, no one can run Tiger across two processors in the original 256Mb. Try removing and re-seating all the memory. OSX, since Panther, has been very fussy about memory quality, Tiger is even more fussy. Comparitively, with OS9 you could get away by sticking biscuits in the slots and it would still boot.
Bus errors and segmentation faults are also memory issues.

But, it could also be trashed system software, putting variables into memory it hasn't reserved yet, referencing variables from memory it doesn't have, etc.

Because you can't boot from the Tiger install disc (It should be the original, retail, Tiger install disc) I suspect it's the memory issue first, especially if you've been losing memory sticks since the crash, explaining the slow-down.

When you boot from the OS9.2.1 CD, can you see how much memory the PMG4 reports ? does it match your expectations ?

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Answer 8

Apr 7, 2006 11:22 AM in response to power mac user

Hi,

Thanks for the link. Some good suggestions in there. But at least in my case, since it won't even boot OS X from the install CD my gut tells me it's hardware related. OS X is pickier than OS 9 about hardware issues - remember all the people who had problems with 3rd party memory when they moved to OS X, even though it worked fine under 9?

When you try to boot in verbose mode, how far does it get? I only get about five lines of text, and then the ever-repeating "Still waiting for root device".

In my opinion, the first thing to try is check the motherboard battery and/or do a PMU reset. Weak batteries can cause freaky behavior. (Though my machine is still keeping time, which makes me wonder.) I'll be doing that when I get home tonight.

Have you run Apple Hardware Test on your system? It might catch something (though it didn't for me - all tests passed).

I'm still puzzled why my machine successfully booted into OS X that one time after using target disk mode. If the battery isn't the problem, I'll have to try to replicate that (I would've tried last night, but it was like 3:00 AM and I needed sleep!)

-Robb

Dual-1.25 GHz MDD G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

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Answer 9

Apr 7, 2006 3:44 PM in response to Simon Teale

Actually, this system came with 10.2 installed. I seem to recall that Apple had a period when systems could be ordered with either OS X or OS 9. In any case, this system definitely came with 10.2. It turns out that the 10.2.4 DVD I mentioned above was actually the install AND restore disk that came with my 1.4GHz DP system. I located the 10.2.1 install CDs that came with the 1GHz system today, but that doesn't boot either. I haven't been able to locate a 9.2.2 install disk yet to test that. Since I need Unix for my work, I pretty much stopped using OS 9 once 10.1 came out.

I also found the Hardware test disk that came with the system (version 1.2.6) and both the quick tests and the more extensive ones gave this system a clean bill of health. This system has 256MB of RAM and was running fine for several months before the problems started. Also, this 1GHz system has a twin - I got two identical systems at the same time for my data analysts. The other system has had no problems since it was upgraded to 10.4 and it also has only 256MB. While I know the systems would run better with more memory, It is clearly possible to run tiger on a 256MB machine.

Since memory has been suggested as a problem, I switched memory modules with the working twin, but still had the same problems. the only curious thing I noticed is that while both modules are clearly labeled PC2700, the hardware test reports them as PC2600. Also the Boot Rom is version 4.4.8f2.

I also reset the PMU, but it still won't boot OS X.

When I booted in single-user mode again and ran fsck -f, the first time, when it got to "checking catalog file" it found an "Invalid index key (4, 27602)" and tried to rebuild the catalog B-tree and failed. I tried running fsck -f again, but then as soon as it checked the root filesystem, I got a "Volume check failed."

I then plugged the 1GHz system in Target disk mode into a system with 10.4.6 and ran the disk utility, but found no problems.

When I boot with the 9.2.1 CD, everything looks as it should, except I can't see the internal HD at all. I can, however, connect to other systems with appletalk and look at their drives.

Finally, after resetting the PMU, when I tried to boot in verbose mode, I got different error messages. First there were about 100 or so messages saying "no such bundle file exists" - they went by too fast to see what all the files were. Then there was an error with the firewall tool. Then there were some malloc error with launchctl, and then the process hung.

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Answer 10

Peter Hyde

Level 4

1,215 points

Apr 7, 2006 6:05 PM in response to The Lab Guy

I would certainly flash the old credit card and get Disk Warrior. Other than that, sorry can't think of anything!

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Answer 11

The hatter

Level 9

61,001 points

Apr 8, 2006 8:47 AM in response to power mac user

A crashed hard drive can prevent booting from a CD/DVD in some cases.

The "PC2600" is a known 'bug' and has not been addressed since it arose in 10.3.0, oddly enough.

I would still buy some 512MB PC2700. Prices are low and will definitely assist even doing email and web browsing. 1GB would be nice.

Have you been able to boot into Open Firmware at all?

Fix for a Mac that won't power up.
Mirrored Doors G4. When you pressed the power button, the button would light up, but the computer would not turn on. The fans on the power supply wouldn't turn on.

FIX: unplug the machine, pull the clock battery, hit the power button to discharge. Then plug it in without the clock battery. The machine should boot perfectly. Shut down, reinstall the clock battery, and now the system is fully functional.

If it is one of the cpus that is failing, it is possible to disable one in Open Firmware also.

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106464
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=25392

http://www.macmaps.com/Macosxspeed.html
http://www.geocities.com/texas_macman/pram.html

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Answer 12

Apr 8, 2006 5:09 PM in response to The hatter

Thank you The hatter! Your suggestion of disabling one of the CPUs was dead on. Looks like I have a fried second processor.

I followed the instructions on this page:

http://developer.apple.com/qa/qa2001/qa1141.html

to disable the second CPU in Open Firmware. (The command is "setenv boot-args cpus=1")

And then she started right up, although slower than usual without the second processor. Power Mac User, I suggest trying this on your machine.

This makes sense now - OS 9 doesn't use the second CPU, so its death wouldn't bother it. But OS X freaks out because it tries to use both processors right away. Apple Hardware Test also apparently does not check the health of the CPUs, so the machine passes its tests with flying colors.

What really bothers me is this is the second time I've had the processor(s) go bad on this machine. (The first time I was getting random freezes during booting or just after, in both OS X and OS 9. Again, Apple Hardware Test reported no problems. Thankfully I was still under warranty then. No such luck this time.)

-Robb

Dual-1.25 GHz MDD G4 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

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Answer 13

Apr 10, 2006 10:16 AM in response to The Lab Guy

Disabling one of the CPUs did not help. However, when I tried to do it in single-user mode, I got a segmentation fault, so I had to use Open Firmware.

Also, I found a 9.2.2 disk finally... It does NOT boot either!!! It hangs in the boot process just before the icon parade starts (with the progress bar showing at ~ 1/8th). Sometimes the screen goes black at this point and sometimes it just hangs with a frozen screen.

So next, I looked at the disk drive. Since I was able to get all the data off the drive in Target mode, I don't think it's the drive itself, but just to be sure, I got an old, but functional, blank 10GB drive. No luck in booting 9.2.2 with that either. I then put the 10GB drive on the ATA-66 bus - no luck with 9.2.2. However, when I booted with 9.2.1, it saw the drive on the ATA-66 and I was able to initialize it. Is ATA-100 support something that was added in 9.2.2?

With these latest results, it seems like this must be a hardware problem. Could it be a flakey ATA-100 controller? But if that's the case, why does target disk mode work? Booting 9.2.1 and single-user mode, plus the fact that it passes the hardware tests make me think it isn't a problem with the #1 CPU. Disabling the second CPU doesn't seem to help, so that's probably not the answer either. What else should I consider?

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Answer 14

Apr 10, 2006 11:16 AM in response to power mac user

power mac user,

just a quick suggestion, cos it'll be quick to do. Try starting up in OS9.2.2 again, with extensions off - hold down shift - there should be no icon parade as there's no extensions. Do the same setup as you did for OS9.2.1 successfully booting.

Brings me back to me first thought about duff memory. Could be the first DIMM is fine, but once you fill that up it all goes to pot. OS9.2.2 - whatever CD it is will not be a retail install disc so it's probably got a ton of extensions.
Duff memory would also suggest why OSX is a complete non-starter.

can you see any of the other disks when you boot to OS9.2.1 ?

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Answer 15

Apr 10, 2006 2:12 PM in response to Simon Teale

OK, it turns out it WAS the 2nd processor gone bad.

I mistakenly assumed that the reason 9.2.2 was not booting was the same as why OS X would not boot. It seems this particular OS 9 disk (which I think came with a 933MHz QS) will not boot in a dual 1GHz MDD. I suspect that problem may have to do with the video card (NVIDIA GeForce 4 MX w/ ADC and DVI connectors), because it seems to be doing some sort of video switching at the point the process stops. I had already tried booting the 9.2.2 CD with extensions off and that failed in exactly the same way. Also, 9.2.1 came up in 256 colors and when I tried to swich to millions, the system crashed.

I made a 9.2.1 hard drive on an older system, and put that drive on the 1GHz MDD on the ATA-66 connector. It booted up (with the ATA-100 bus empty), although, as I mentioned above, when I tried switching the color depth, the system crashed. I then plugged the OS X disk back in on the ATA-100 bus and rebooted to see if 9.2.1 could see the ATA-100 disk. To my surprise, the system came up in 10.4 from the ATA-100 disk! I still had the cpus=1 boot flag set. I switched the flag off, rebooted, and the process hung. Swiched the flag on again, and it rebooted fine in 10.4. So now we have the system back up with 1 CPU.

As a final test, I tried the 9.2.2 QS disk in the healthy twin of the 1GHz MDD, and it also failed to boot in exactly the same way. It seems that 9.2.1 will boot these systems, but some of the hardware is unsupported or partially supported: ATA-100 and the video cards at least.

It seems like these early MDD systems had more than thier share of problems. I was reminded that the "healthy twin" system is actually a replacement. The original system was DOA with similar symptoms (boot hung in the grey screen with the gear going around). I'm not sure what exactly was the problem with that system, but after a few things Apple had us try over the phone, they had us send the system back for a replacement. We have yet to have any major hardware problems in our 10 other G4 and G5 macs.

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