Re: [MLUG] urgent hardware trouble shooting problem

[Nathan Odle <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Jon,

Sounds like it could be one of two things.

1.  One possibility is that it's power-supply related.  In any computer 
the two main things that you will see trouble with are the hard drives 
and the power supply.  Why?  I think it's because they're the only 
components in the box with moving parts.  I know that you said the drive 
was spinning up, but there's a slight chance that you've lost either +5 
or +12...not sure if a drive would still spin up but it is a possibility.

2.  Probably the most likely culprit is your drive controller.  I've 
seen these go out many a time - when everything seems to work but 
communication between the drive and the rest of the system it's a pretty 
good bet that this is what's going on.  Cables can obviously cause this 
too but since nobody's been in the box recently (I assume) they should 
be OK.  On the other hand, cables are a quick/cheap thing to check so 
you might still go ahead and try it.

The good news is, that if it is the drive controller there's still a 
decent chance that you can get up-and-running *without* a logic board 
swap.  All you need is an OS X-compatible PCI controller card.  I have a 
couple here, and unfortunately I can't find any good info on whether or 
not they're supported on the Mac, but I'd be happy to drop one by if 
it'd help any.  Otherwise, the friendly folks at Computer Spectrum 
probably will be happy to sell you a controller card, but no guarantee 
that what they have is Mac-compatible either.

If I can help any with a system to help retrieve the data, let me know.  
I've got a Mini-ITX Linux box here that is fluent in HFS+ that one could 
use to retrieve data if necessary. 

In other news, Mac.com's backup service is probably looking pretty good 
right now eh? ;)

-N

Jonathan King wrote:

>This is slightly off-topic since it's a Mac OSX box, but I'm in a tight spot. 
>
>Today is a busy week, with conferences (two of them) I leave for on
>Wedneday.  Naturally, I have two posters to finish, and one of which I
>really and truly wanted to finish tonight.
>
>But my dual G4 powermac was hung when I came to the office.  "That's
>odd" I thought, since the sucker basically never crashes.  But I
>restart it and...it doesn't restart.  After a few repetitions of that,
>I look inside the case.  The disk is one of those great IBM Deathstar
>models.  "S-word!" I say.  But, oddly enough, it looks like the disk
>is spinning up when I try to restart.  It's just that nothing further
>happens.  "OK", I say.  "I'll boot off of my install CD and find out
>what's wrong there".  Nice idea, except I can't boot off my CD in a
>normal way (trivia: hold down C key while booting).  That's good news
>and bad news, I think.  The good news is that it's less likely it's my
>disk that's screwed, since I can't boot off of anything.  The bad news
>is that I can't boot off of anything.  (The helpful icon here is the
>"barred circle" (don't walk) after many minutes.
>
>So what the heck could be wrong?  I think I can rule out hard disk
>alone, and since the disk spins up, the CD door can open and close,
>and the fan runs (loudly, as always) I suspect it's not the power
>supply.  So am I actually looking at something like Mr. Logic Board? 
>If so, *gack*.  Where the heck am I going to find anybody who has one
>of those guaranteed tomorrow?  Does anybody else have any good ideas? 
>I think I may be reduced to trying to take the HD and install it into
>a firewire enclosure and attempt a brain transplant.  Anything else
>you'd try?
>
>So far, Google has given me no joy on this, but I might be too
>panicked to be trying the correct search words.  <Sob.>
>
>jking
>_______________________________________________
>members mailing list
>EMAIL:PROTECTED
>http://mlug.missouri.edu/mailman/listinfo/members
>  
>

_______________________________________________
members mailing list
EMAIL:PROTECTED
http://mlug.missouri.edu/mailman/listinfo/members