PowerMac G4 MDD Booting/reformatting problems (OS X 10.5.1)

[obobski]

Hello!

I recently decided to try a PPC out for the first time, and picked up a refurbished PowerMac G4 MDD (1GHz DP, Ti 4600 graphics). The machine came pre-loaded with OS X 10.5.1 and booted just fine, so I know it originally worked. However I've run into problems and cannot get it to boot OS X or even boot from the OS X re-install discs I have (which are for 10.3.2) - here's roughly what I can describe of the problem, and what I've tried thus far:

- I had the machine booting into 10.5.1 "out of the box" with no problems. All features that I could test, worked.
- I opened the machine up to clean it out, and noticed that the hard-drive was not on the ATA-100 connector, so I moved it over to the ATA-100 connector.
- From this point, the machine has never booted into OS X again. It would hang on the "blue screen" (and error messages from safemode seem to indicate its trying to boot from the Ethernet port and failing).

Since then I've followed this guide to try and fix that:
http://macs.about.com/od/MacTrouble...Startup-Problems-Stuck-At-The-Blue-Screen.htm

It had no effect one way or another (I of course also immediately tried switching the disk back over to the ATA-66 connector, which didn't work).

I've also removed superfluous add-on cards, cycled through the various memory modules one-by-one, tried booting without keyboard and mouse, tried the disk on both ATA-66 and ATA-100 ports, and tried resetting the PMU.

After all this, I decided to give up on 10.5.1, and got out the 10.3.2 discs (my original intention was to have 10.3.x on this machine for Classic mode support) - consistently the machine will KP ("Your machine must be restarted...") when trying to load from that (I've only tried from "Disc 1 of 3" - is that perhaps my problem?). I've tried polishing that disc to remove scratches and still get the same error (I have no other Mac to test that disc in - my Windows PC will spin the disc up and show a disc in the drive, but it shows 0 bytes of valid data and I have no idea if the disc is in good shape or not; after polishing it it looks fine though).

The hard-drive (I'm assuming its after-market - it's a 500GB model, and the sticker on the back (of the Mac) says 120GB) has been tested and found to pass all of the manufacturer's tests, and shows the proper Journaled HFS formatting, but the machine seems unwilling/unable to read it.

Finally, I found another online guide that suggested zapping PRAM 3 times in a row, and then calling reset-nvram, set-defaults, and reset-all from the OpenFirmware prompt. Did all that, no change - still KP on trying to boot 10.3.2 CD, and still dead in the water trying to boot the hard-drive. I've tried the machine with the disk unhooked and get the Mac/? alternating image as it sees no valid disk (and in OpenFirmware it does see the hard-drive when it is connected).

From all of this I'm assuming that the underlying hardware (e.g. motherboard, graphics card, etc) is in working condition, but there's something misconfigured or corrupted on the hard-drive (leading it to be unbootable), and I'm wondering if the 10.3.2 discs I have aren't somehow inappropriate for this machine (causing it to not boot from them correctly), or if I'm missing some "gotcha" for installing OS X. The 10.3.2 discs are black and have a silver X on them, they aren't the grey restore discs I've seen in some other pictures.

Any help would be appreciated in getting this old thing back up and running. Thanks.

 

[gsahli]

Did I miss it? Did you try startup with the option key held down (immediately after startup sound)? Does that show your drive (it's an icon menu of available drives for startup)?

 

[harryb2448]

G'day and welcome to the forums.

One of your problems is most tips you get on the web now are for Intel only machines, and not PowerPC. Are the Panther discs 100% guaranteed the ones that came with that computer when new? Strictly model specific system discs.

G4's are now like dinosaurs alas, so do not spend any money on it and as much as I hesitate to say it, maybe it is a lemon.

 

[obobski]

Thanks for the replies - was kind of afraid this would go overlooked because I'm "the new guy with a weird question." Very nice to see a sense of community.

To the questions:

-Yes I've tried the option booting. It does show the 10.5.1 disk and the optical drive, booting from the 10.5.1 partition will just give me the blue screen, and booting from the OS X disc will KP.

- The 10.3 discs are not "original" for this machine - as far as I know (and as far as the seller on ebay knew) they are retail OS X 10.3 discs. Yes I've tried holding the startup key down, and

On a hunch that maybe the 10.3 disc was bad or the hard-drive was messed up, I decided to try and find another bootable image. I ended up finding a Ubuntu 12.04 PPC LiveCD - I have no idea if Ubuntu is a good choice for PPC, but it was bootable and that's all I cared about. Linux also has the advantage (over OS X) of generally being extremely verbose during boot-up, so hopefully I could glean something there. Well, I think I may have figured out the problem with this machine:

Upon booting the Ubuntu CD, the machine sees it and boots to it no problem, bringing me to the boot prompt for yaboot. Anything that keeps it in OF text-mode works just fine, but the second it tries to start with X (as in X.org not OS X) it throws errors related to the nVidia card and then the screen corrupts before it locks up. So my suspicion is that the Ti 4600 is faulty; this isn't amazingly surprising as the card came with a buggered fan (I have since replaced that), and I've also never had great luck with nVidia cards (although, as far as I know (knew?) NV2x was largely before the era of massive failure rates due to manufacturing issues (afaik that began with the G7x era)). I'm currently on the hunt for another AGP card for this machine (should only be a few dollars) and can report back once I've tested that.

As far as the machine being so old (it was built sometime in 2002), that's kind of the point for me: I like old machines and I've largely "conquered" the Intel side of things, so I figured I'd try a Mac out next. I'm not meaning to use it for anything contemporary, but I do appreciate the caution.

 

[gsahli]

I think you need to read the "stickie" FAQ post about "which CD do I need" on "OS X- operating system" here on Mac-forums:
http://www.mac-forums.com/showthread.php?t=263249

Regarding Ubuntu - the nVidia drivers are not working on PowerPC (and no one is working on this, because they have migrated to the nouveau driver which doesn't support cards of the age for PowerPC). You have to follow the release notes and use a fallback frame buffer video driver for X to work.

I'd try 10.3 installed on another internal drive.

(I have a 1GHz MDD that dual boots 10.4.11 and Lubuntu 14.04.)

 

[pinto79]

Check to make sure the optical drive is jumpered to be "Master" and connected to one of the IDE buses on the far left of the logic board near the hinge, ideally the one marked ATA-3 (Or ATA-33).

Also make sure the hard drive is jumpered to be "Master" on the ATA-100 bus on the far right of the logic board, again near the hinge.

 

[gsahli]

PM G4 MDDs use Cable Select, not Master/Slave, by default. See pg 73 of the Apple Manual:
http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Manuals/desktops/PowerMacG4DualSU.PDF

Important Your Macintosh works with ATA and ATAPI internal storage devices that are set
for cable select mode. Because cable select mode forces the drive to set its ID based upon its
position on the cable, hard drives and optical drives are easily configured. Before you install
an additional ATA and ATAPI drive, check the documentation that came with your drive or
with the manufacturer to make sure it is set for cable select mode.

Important Use the original Apple cables that came with your Macintosh when you install
additional drives. Some non-Apple cables may not correctly support cable select mode.

 

[obobski]

Just an update:

I was right, the graphics card was the culprit. I got a "new" (new to me, ha!) Radeon 9000 Pro Mac Edition today, popped it in, Ubuntu booted right up (its *SLOW*), pulled that CD out (The "hold mouse button to eject" actually works now too!), and 10.5.1 started right up without any problems, and even gave me a little message that OS X detected a system error and it had been logged, and could be sent to Apple or printed/saved if I wanted. It's running just fine with the 9000 Pro, as far as I can tell, so the issue seems to have been squarely with the GF4 Ti.

Thanks for the link on the disc info - pictures confirm I do in fact have retail discs for 10.3, and if I can find them (...oh the joys of holiday cleaning and re-arranging while trying to work on a computer) I'm going to try loading 10.3 in place of 10.5 (I don't have discs for 10.5; it just came pre-loaded on the machine).

Another question I've come up with: Both the GeForce 4 and the Radeon have ADC and DVI-I connectors; I've seen DVI to ADC adapters that would let me run my ADC monitor on a DVI output (e.g. if I wanted two ADC monitors on this computer, one would need such an adapter), but are there adapters that will let me use the ADC output on the computer to drive DVI or VGA (e.g. ADC to DVI/VGA)? I don't dislike my ADC monitor, but it's kind of a boat anchor compared to the newer monitors I have at my desk, and it also only has the one input (while my newer monitors have multiple inputs, and it'd be no problem to just "add" the Mac to those inputs...if it had enough outputs).

Thanks again for all of the information and responses!

 

[gsahli]

I never had an ADC monitor…
ADC output provides digital video and power to the monitor. ADC out to DVI adapters do exist - but seem rare now since Apple abandoned the ADC connection.
Amazon has one (Belkin) for $88!