Re: [MLUG] urgent hardware trouble shooting problem

[Jason McIntosh <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

Few other thoughts to add to Nathan's comments:
Is the startup chime happening?  If not, the system isn't even posting 
to get to the harddrive.  If you had the machine muted before hand, of 
course you won't here this.  CMD+CTRL+P+R resets the PRAM for a Mac - 
this can fix some things (it might be CMD+OPTION - been a while since 
I"ve had to do it).  There's also on some of those systems an actual 
reset button internally which can reset the settings.  Course, I don't 
remember off hand where the heck it's at, but there are instructions 
online a few places.
Other than that, I've had bad memory and other funky hardware cause 
similar problems.  I've got a G4 400 that occasionally I have to 
literally drop it while turning the power on to get it to post.  I 
don't know why, but doing so gets it to work.... so, there's always the 
literal "boot" method ;)
Jason

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On Oct 17, 2004, at 9:32 PM, 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
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