My G5 Is Under Repair…, I'm a poor lonesome moderator Options

[lepetitmartien]

Well, I wasn't a lot around for 8 days as my G5 1.8 from 2003 decided to freeze on spot since last wednesday. It freezed at choice during boot (rotating thing), loading OS X (blue screen) or right during/after login.

The lithium battery was dead but not at first when I checked it, when I could change it it went slightly more "normal" as I could try to start from the Apple Hardware Test. Else I could only boot in Open Firmware and Single User Mode.

When I tried to startup on the install CD/DVD of 10.2.7, panther, tiger it froze too. However, after the lithium battery change I could install a 10.2.7 on the remaining drive (freeze in the middle but the system seems 100% on the drive).

The drives were OK, as the RAM (checked with memtest, while in SUM it can test 97% of you RAM including lower part not available another way), I counsel Applejack too which enables you to check drives, permissions, clean caches, check preferences while in SUM.

When I tried the AHT i went into something I found out is a commun bug instead of launching AHT i ended up in OF with this:

CODE

Invalid memory access at %SRR0: 000000000.6000d300 %SRR1: 100000000.40003030

Pretty impressive… but not meaning a lot.

As I knew my RAM was ok (even bought 1 GB more to check), the drives too, I tried in turn without the DVD burner, each SATA drives. I had no graphic card to try but overall it looks bad, only the hot pot, the temp sensors, the motherboard and the CPU are left, and no Applecare I have either (sorry Mr Apple, too expensive and never a mac has left me this way, NEVER). It's at the repairshop here in Paris since yesterday, and I ressucitated ye olde timer BW G3 last evening.

I'll buy tomorrow a FW external enclosure for the SATA drive on which I had saved my keychains/mail/etc as here I have no mail (it's my old mail database but I'm under tiger for a few months now and the databases are not compatible).

So in the end, it looks like it's something on the motherboard wich is blown in some way, so it'll $$$ in the end I know chips/components do die, but it's heartbrake, this was a fabulous computer. I'll know for sure in ten days.

Really, I need a macbook… (and no money for it s…t!)

[lepetitmartien]

Well, on the SATA front, no enclosure, all the ones I've seen available here are for IDE drives, the SATA they talk about is all eSATA and not internal SATA to something else.

So, the alternatives are:

- a SATA to USB 2 enclosure (beeeeeerh)
- a SATA/PATA (PATA=IDE) to USB 2 adapter, there's some around as helpers, it's been tried and tested and works great link is for the newertech version, others are available. Certainly the cheapest solution.

btw, I'm not fond of some USB as I'll need at the moment 2 things: a Tiger up and running on my G3 (if I want my email, I need Tiger, the database handling changed between panther and tiger in Mail and it's not reversible… SIGH), and the G3 is (bad) USB 1 so the recovery of GB of data is not my dream today…

On installing Tiger on a G3, it can be done, but the easiest means are: using another mac for the instal then replace the drive back in the G3 or replace the CD reader with a DVD reader…

- a SATA or SATA/PATA to firewire enclosure. There are some available on the net but it's priced crazily.

The pleiades eSATA/2 x FW800/FW400/USB2 is 109€ Pleiades Super S-Combo The full specs, I have 5 other enclosure from this brand, and they are great (a bit noisy due to the casing, but it depends of the drives)
Another enclosure with eSATA/FW400/USB2 is 80€ VulcanTech T1 also available here in the US
A dual drive exists too, but it's even more pricey $165 in FW400/USB2

Ooch

Just found the Pleiades is available in SATA to FW400 and cheaper… (given the price they sell the super combo, I can find an even better price…

Got to dive into this even more…

I want my mail and my keychains BACK! (SATA can go to HELL)(uh… just a one lettre case…)

This post has been edited by lepetitmartien: Sat 10 Jun 2006, 00:19

[lepetitmartien]

While browsing the manufacturer website I found out that the enclosure MusicStoreKoeln sells as SATA to FW4000 is NOT SATA, there's not SATA to FW400, only PATA/IDE to FW400. Someone should start to mind his Ps and Qs in Koeln…

Right now, one of the best solution is also a PCI card for 2 SATA channels. There's some cheap at OWC, starting at $40, the cheapest I found here is 84€… erk!

I need my keychains! I need my Mail!

[lepetitmartien]

The G3 is tigerized now! It's working great even if I had to replace the internel CD with a DVD burner. The updates did not work well the first time, the computer would not shut down correctly (closing wheel on blue screen never ending). A total re-update with a thorough cleaning of permissions, caches, desktop, plist etc did the trick. Thanks to AppleJack and ToolsX, I'm not sure the 1.7.0 version of OnyX is ok… I'll abstain till there's 1.7.1

It's definitely snappier than panther! Even if you can't do much more than writing/mail/browsing.

I've had a lot of issues to recover my user settings on the G5 a teamer lent me time on on monday. But now it's okay, I've still to verify the Mail is working But one thing to know. When recovering parts of a user account, be sure to be on a mac with the same user config as the ones you're recovering, I wasn't and it's been a nightmare due to permissions problems.

Apple should really make a tool for this, where you only check for the essential files you need absolutely. And not cloning the whole junk.

[lepetitmartien]

G5 is "under analysis" since yesterday…

The G3 (BW 400) is ok, but not thriving. Difficult to do my job here with it it's still slow even if it's better than under panther.

Upon the account recovery (not cloning, just recover the few files I really need -keychains, Mail databases, Adium databases (for Adium), safari prefs (cookies, URLs…)- was WAY easier with an exact config of users than starting up from the SATA drive I had my files on which has the right user, but not in the same creation position… from the Tiger on the SATA drive, lots of problems with permissions (same user though), from the same config worked like a charm.

[thegrapeguy]

Sorry to hear about your G5. Mine is demented. Bought from the applestore.com as a refurb back in March it has been filled with freezeups and glitches ever since. As a side note despite 2 rounds of diagnostics with the Apple store in my hometown nothing, RAM, Hard Drives, processors came up wrong.
A perfect machine they said. Yesterday in a routine Apple Hardware test that I did some RAM came up errored. I honed it down to the chip that was bad and unfortunately it was a chip that I installed recently and since the problems were present from the beginning when I had the original RAM I'm still up the creek.

Today I'm taking it into the local apple store and they're replacing the Logic board and the 2 processors.
I hope your and my situation gets better.

[lepetitmartien]

As mine is under analysis since Wednesday I wonder…

What was the model exactly?

If checking the memory using Memtest and looking after it in Open Firmware brings back nothing, the problem is not in the memory itself.

To see really the RAM in Open Firmware:

- start up in OF: command-option-o-f on start up
- type: dev /memory <enter>
- type: .properties <enter>
- you'll have a lot of stuff on screen, including the hexadecimal view of RAM banks. in a G5 RAM is in pair, so you must have the HEX repeating itself twice (it's a bit interleaved by lines, you'll see that easily). If the different lines don't match at all, either the RAM is not identical or bad, or somehting on the Motherboard is screwing up things.

In my case, I had strange stuff written whatever the config (I have 3 pairs to test) however I'd insert them. But memtest said it was ok…

[lepetitmartien]

To se the whole environnement in OF:

- type printenv <enter>

it may not be very clear or easy to decipher, but you can see right away if your mac doesn't know its own bus speed (it happens)

to reset NVRAM in OF:

- type reset-nvram <enter>
- type set-defaults <enter>
- type reset-all <enter>

It'll restart all by itself

Mind that it doesn't zap the PRAM (so command-option-p-r on start up til the second start up sound)

[thegrapeguy]

My exact G5 is the PowerMac G5 2.7. The spec sheet says it came out in early (April) '05. Today I pick it up from the Apple store after having 2 processors and one logic board installed. When I signed the repair order the Apple guy said "take a look at how much that's costing us to fix it". The bill said $2600!
I wanted to say that's close to the price of all the wasted time I have in down studio time. I also said "I would have liked you guys to upgrade me to the Quad Core, and I would pay the difference". Anything to get out of this refurb 2.7 I bought from applestore.com.

Thanks for the help on SMU and RAM and I will ask them to test the lithium battery. I just feel in my gut that my problem (predominantly system wide freezeups, application freezeups, strange stutter glitches when I hit the stop button after recording audio - all when using Logic 7.2) comes from the way a PCI card communicates with the computer and Logic software.

I had far less problems when I used the crappy 1/8 inch input and output on the G5 tower. I've been through the Echo Mia card and now the ESI Julia card. I can't believe both these cards are bad.

Keep us posted on your computer.

[lepetitmartien]

Go$$$hhh the price…

Phone call from the technician yesterday. The problem is aleatoric, they can't put their finger on. They keep tryin'…

Not it must be the season, besides the few guys in the Apple forums, one member in the Frenhc forum here seems to have something too on his dual CPU, and it smells the CPU problem given his Apple Hardware test sweet indecipherable message.