iBook G3 500MHz Questions

[wardsenatorfe92]

Thanks for helping me with this, I'd like to get to the bottom.

I've reinstalled the OS (9.2) several times, with no avail. Last time I completely reformatted it and preformed a clean install. The OS 9.2.1 disk I use (retail) is virtually new, no scratches at all. I don't have any other Mac OS disks to try.. or else I'd tried an older version.

The machine has the basic 64MB RAM, which would be the chip soldered. Nothing has been added. Would buying a RAM stick help? (Though, I don't want to invest money in this unless I know that is the problem).

The machine was using the default extensions at the time. I just switched it to Mac OS Base, and it gives me a System Error on start-up "Illegal Instruction" and when I click restart, it pops up the same bomb error with "CHK Error"... so now, I'm completely locked out of Mac OS. (again). It will not start with extensions off, either. So I assume that means yet another reinstall.. great. I don't understand this machine at all.

Errors, I've mainly had Type 3, CHK & Illegal Instruction.. (bomb wise) on the other (a red box saying save all work, restart the computer) I've had types 1-3.

[jpross123]

Well im not sure what the problem is, I think you should throw it in the garbage tonight.

[Floydy]

The machine has the basic 64MB RAM, which would be the chip soldered. Nothing has been added. Would buying a RAM stick help?

Adding more RAM at this point is not going to improve things. The errors that you are reporting would be due to OS, HDD, RAM or worse case MLB.
The only way to get to the bottom of this is to reduce the computer down to the basics. In your case that would be an Airport card (if one was fitted under the keyboard) and RAM under the keyboard (not applicable).

That said a faulty Airport card normally results in a kernel panic during the boot process or system freeze when enabled including -3278 type errors.

If you had access to an external HDD that would be useful to see if these issues could be reproduced. Do you get the same outcome(s) when booted from the Mac OS install disc media?

If the issue is not there when the iBook is run from external HDD or CD then it is likely that the HDD is failing in such a way that disc first aid is not able to report an issue. At that point you would be looking to remove the HDD and or replace it (not that easy on your iBook).

[wardsenatorfe92]

Thanks, I was thinking the HDD. The machine acts virtually normal when booted off the 9.2.1 CD. I don't have access to an external HDD.. (well I do, but its over 128GB..) so I don't imagine it would work. It doesn't have an airport card, I got the machine with the original specifications. I'll have to look into a HDD (and more RAM).. possibly upgrade it to OS X while I'm at it.

Jake

@jpross123: throw it away? are you crazy?

[Floydy]

I don't have access to an external HDD.. (well I do, but its over 128GB..)

That wont matter if it is an external HDD - If it is a firewire HDD then it could be used to directly install Mac OS onto and selected as a startup disk via the CD, Startup Control Panel OR when pressing ALT/OPTION immediately after powering on the computer.

Some PPC portables with USB 1.1 can boot from a USB HDD (I have not tried this myself personally) and definitely worth a try...

[Temetka]

Not sure if anyone else has mentioned this directly, but the early Dual USB iBooks with Rage graphics did not suffer from the GPU problems that the later Radeon models did. In fact, except for failing IBM hard drives, they are quite reliable.

This is very good to know!

I own one of those models. I am actually installing Tiger on it as I type.

Right now it has 640MB of RAM and later on I plan to install the Combo drive from my dead 600MHz Ibook with a failed GPU. I *might* swap out the 40GB HD if I have a larger one, otherwise I'll stick with what I have.

I loved these iBook's ever since the day they were released and always wanted, but never could afford, one of them.

[wardsenatorfe92]

Yeah, definately something to look into. For now, I'm just saving the iBook as a rainy day project .

[wardsenatorfe92]

So after nearly a year, I'm reconsidering working on this iBook again. I just wanted to see if there were any second opinions about whats wrong with it.

For a flashback, this machine is pretty much unusable due to system errors that keep occurring (aka The Bomb). We're running OS 9.2.2 which was installed from (what I assume to be) an almost brand new OS 9.2.1 CD-ROM. Machine is pretty bare bone, 64 MB RAM/ 500 MHz/ 10 GB HDD. There is no airport card installed, or at least, it does not recognize one (during the slight period of time I was able to get it to boot). With the CD-ROM in the machine, it seems to work fine. Installation is fine, for the most part, and the hard drive will reformat. The first time, however, that I went to reinstall Mac OS 9 over the existing install, it kept giving me errors saying (i.e. ... Problems were encountered accessing the file "AppleCD Audio Player" on the disk "Macintosh HD". Please move the file to another folder and try again. The solution was I ended up clearing out the contents of the entire drive and then restarting the OS installation, which it didn't hang.

I guess to get to the point, the problem is that the machine will refuse to load or execute certain commands, and will just result with a bomb error with some random description. Eventually, the OS install will corrupt to the point where the machine won't boot at all. Example error would be when I tried to launch Stuffit expander, it gave me this bomb error "Sorry, a system error has occurred. "Stuffit expander", error type 10". This would be the same for several other applications, but again, usually different error codes each time. I have also got "error type 10" sometimes when I restarted and tried to login (right at the prompt before I can click anything) "Sorry, a system error has occurred "Login" error type 10). From there it gets to the point that it will no longer boot. I will receive the following bomb errors on boot:
"illegal instruction. - to temporarily turn off extensions... yadda yadda"
"CHK Error. -to temporarily turn off extensions.."
"EM Extension - illegal instruction. - to temporarily turn off extensions..."

And it pretty much just cycles through those errors. Now, turning off extensions does absolutely nothing, it will just generate a different version of the error that was previously stated. And usually once these errors start appearing on boot, the OS will not boot any longer from the internal HDD. Inserting the OS 9.2 CD, the machine will boot fine, normally. From there, I can reinstall the OS, reformat the hard drive, etc. However, each time, after re-installation, i will still get these same errors, they just keep coming back.

To also note, I'm not very sure of the history of this machine. Its a little scratched up, I believe its probably an ex-school laptop which was surplused and then somebody put on ebay. Everything seems to be intact. Also to note, I did buy a replacement power adapter and battery, I'm not sure if that would have anything to do with it either. The battery I believe is designed for the later iBook series (doesn't match the case but it fits), and the adapter is a knockoff. The battery it shipped with is completely dead, but the machine still gives me the same symptoms with the original battery. I don't have any other equipment that I can test this unit with, this is the only PowerPC machine that I own.

Let me know if you all can come up with any other conclusions, and I'll do my best to respond! Thanks.

[wardsenatorfe92]

Update:

Well, I finally dug it out of the closet. I decided I was going to tear the sucker apart to see how hard it would be to replace the hard drive if necessary. Pulled up ifixit, removed hundreds of screws... and just to my surprise, two of the screws connecting the top case are stripped. Whoever opened up this sucker before I did wanted to make sure that nobody else was going to get into it, I've never seen screws so tight in my life. picture (bottom two with orange rings). So I ended up reassembling it, and it still powered on. There is probably some way to remove the screws but I don't know if the effort is worth it, honestly. With it being bare bone specs and parts not easily accessible, its almost just as affordable to buy another whole unit before fixing this...

As a last resort, some guy mentioned on another forum that it could be the OS 9 CD that I had was corrupt. It wasn't mine anyway, and I returned it a while back. So I went and hunted down a 9.2.1 copy on eBay just to see if it would give me different results. Well, it installed OS 9 and everything was peachy until I restarted it the second time. It started giving me bomb errors again at the loading screen, regardless if extensions were on or not (illegal instruction, error type 10). I'm starting to think this is some sort of HDD issue, since the machine can load off the OS 9 CD and work fine. The only way that the OS will load fine is if you leave it at the clean install and don't open up any applications or change any settings.

So from here, it looks like this iBook is seriously screwed up. I'm not even sure if its worth fixing anymore or what to do with it. Back to the bookshelf.

[Bunsen]

It very much sounds to me like a hard disk with bad sectors, a flaky drive PCB, drive cable, or (worst case scenario) onboard IDE controller. The last seems unlikely, as you have no trouble with the CD drive.

I think booting from an external drive is a pointless diagnostic step, as you've already established that it boots OK from something. So I guess your next step is to get past those pesky screws after all. Any chance you'd be able to drill or Dremel them out?

Alternative thoughts:

• Replace the CD drive with an adapter for a second HD, or a CF
• Firewire target disk mode - boot it from a drive in another Mac, perhaps a 'book with a dead screen
• Small external FW drive - I've seen FW-CF adapters on ebay. Silent and portable.

[wardsenatorfe92]

Like said, I'm just now starting to explore working on computers and what-not so I'm not perfect at this stuff. Thats one of the main reasons I bought this iBook to begin with. I guess the biggest problem I have is that I don't have access to a lot of spare parts.

I'm going to see about drilling and getting the screws out, though I hate to do that. Even when I booted from the OS 9 CD, on occasion I would get an bomb error if i tried to browse the contents of the HDD. I'll keep everyone updated!

[wardsenatorfe92]

OK: Update & More problems.

So as you may remember in my conquest thread, I obtained another iBook to be a donor unit to get this iBook back working. I ended up taking the DVD Drive, RAM, Airport and HDD out of the other iBook and installing it in the 500MHz iBook to see if I could get it back working (took a VERY long time and LOTS of patience!). Also got a 10.4 DVD to upgrade it to Tiger. The new HDD seemed to solve the problems I had stated earlier (its another 10GB drive as well) and I was successfully running 9.2/10.1 on it.

I got the 10.4 DVD and went up upgrade it. Everything is fine, it installs fine and works great. Now the problem lies with the 10.4.11 combo update. The first time I downloaded it and tried to install it, (via Software Updater) it failed installing it. So I downloaded a copy off of Apple's website and tried it that way. It worked, the iBook restarted and it would stall at the Apple logo and spinning wheel. After 30 minutes, I hard booted it. It seemed to get further (finally got to the "Starting Mac OS X" screen) and then it would stall with the status bar at 100%. It also wouldn't recognize the trackpad and I had to plug in an external mouse to move the cursor around (even though you couldn't do anything). This morning I reinstalled 10.4, it went to restart and it gave me a kernel panic (Sys. Failure: cpu=0, code=00000001 (Corrupt stack) ). I rebooted, and I got the infamous "You need to restart your computer" message at the Apple logo screen. So for a third time, I reinstalled Mac OS X 10.4. Everything works, got through the installation and back to the desktop. I tried to install the Combo updater for 10.4.11 again (via. package from Apples site, not the software update), it goes all the way through it and at the end says "Update failed, try again". I tried to reopen the installer but it would automatically close after I open it. So I go to the apple menu and click "About this Mac" and it says I'm running 10.4.11 now. I reboot, and now I'm back to where I was, the iBook just stalls at the Apple logo and the spinning wheel. The hard drive sounds like its doing something every now and then, but not much activity.

Any suggestions on what to do from here? I ran the "Apple Hardware Diagnosis" CD, and everything passed. Somebody said earlier (based on the issues this machine had with OS 9 and no RAM installed) that the RAM soldered to the logic board could be bad, but I have no idea what to do with that. I do have another 256MB stick in there now which seems to be working fine.

Specs: 500MHz/ 320MB RAM (256+64)/ 10GB HDD/ DVD-ROM drive. The Tiger DVD is just a standard black installation DVD, just 10.4 retail.
As for the unit that was used for parts, you may ask me why I don't just use it, but it has its own set of problems as well. The case and all of its components are skewed from where the previous owner used ducktape to reassemble it and its all cracked up. I'd just swap cases but they appear to be different from the 500MHz model, and along with that the keyboard connector is broken and won't come off the logic board on the 600MHz board.

[FlyingToaster]

You can maybe try an apple hardware test cd. It depends on if it works on your ibook or not, some models it doesn't support.
I think it has a long RAM test on it, maybe leave it loop overnight?

http://www.info.apple.com/support/aht.html

[wardsenatorfe92]

@FlyingToaster, After I got the kernel panic I tried the Apple Hardware Test CD for the iBook. I did the long version, which took about 15 minutes and it stated that everything passed (including RAM).

[wardsenatorfe92]

OK: Update.

I tried resetting the PRAM. Nothing. Wouldn't boot in safe mode either.

I booted from Verbose mode. I got the following (it hangs here):
ATIRage128: Using AGP
AirportFirmware: start Sta f/w download
disk0s2: I/O Error.
Workaround Bonjour: Unknown error: 0
disk0s2: I/O Error.
disk0s2: I/O Error.
disk0s2: I/O Error.
disk0s2: I/O Error.
disk0s2: I/O Error.

Any ideas? Remember, everything passed the Apple Hardware Test.

[mcdermd]

disk0 is going to be the hard drive. You're getting hard drive errors there. You may want to boot it into firewire target mode and do a surface scan on the disk from another computer.

[wardsenatorfe92]

disk0 is going to be the hard drive. You're getting hard drive errors there. You may want to boot it into firewire target mode and do a surface scan on the disk from another computer.

I was afraid of that. What I don't understand is why it doesn't seem to experience problems until I install the 10.4.11 update, it normally installed 10.4 just fine from the DVD (except for the last time I installed it after zeroing out the HDD, it gave me a different kernel panic and popped up the message "you need to restart your computer". I guess its as expected because the hard drive is probably 10+ years old, but still annoying because I just got finished disassembling the entire machine just to put a "working" hard drive back in it.

I tried zeroing out the disk to repair any bad sectors and it still read SMART status as "Verified", even after the kernel panics. I just don't understand why these problems never occurred until now, i was running OS 9.2/10.1 on it until about a week ago (although minimal usage).

I guess I'll need to locate another hard drive, then. Seems like this iBook is turning into a money pit.

(also need to get a f/w cable so I can start utilizing target disk mode)

[wardsenatorfe92]

Finally.... MISSION COMPLETED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Got a 80GB 5400RPM HDD today to replace the problematic 10GB HDD in the iBook. After spending all afternoon taking the HDD out and putting the new one in, I'm proud to report that the machine is up and running like a charm! Hasn't skipped a beat yet, already have 10.4.11 on it (all updates) and 9.2.2. Awesome!

The only thing I'm noticing is the machine being a little sluggish due to it only having 320MB RAM. I guess I'll have to look into a 512MB stick now... still can't believe I got it working! (only took me, two years?)

Any suggestions for my next project?