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Can’t get PM7220 to boot

CTB

Well-known member
I have a really weird boot issue with my PM7220. It hasn’t been powered up in 3 years but before it was unplugged last time it was fully functional with a recapped motherboard, rebuilt PSU and fully serviced floppy drive. It won’t boot off the hard drive but that could be expected. It won’t boot off the CD drive with a freshly burnt 7220 Install CD. It also won’t boot off the floppy drive in a very weird way. I have made known working 8.6 disk tools floppy and also a the disk tools disk off the 7220 Install CD. When booting off either of these two floppy’s I get the happy Mac and then the drives ejects the disks, the happy Mac stays for about 10 seconds and then the question marks comes up.
Any ideas?
 

jessenator

Well-known member
It won’t boot off the CD drive with a freshly burnt 7220 Install CD.
Just curious here. What speed did you burn it at? This is anecdotal, and may very well not be universal, but I've had to burn my discs very slowly (1x or 4x at most) to get a copy that will be read on older CD-ROMs. Also, was it a garden-variety CD-R or a CD-RW? RWs tend to not read well on older drives as well. YMMV, but just a thought to consider. Also, simply because I've made the same mistake, make sure it's not a DVD-R 😖

I haven't tried the 7220 localized image myself, but several of the PowerMac 4400 image from Mac Garden work great. Another alternative is the StarMax 7.6 disk. All the LPX-40/Tanzania machines are essentially the same computer and should be able to use the same boot media regardless of the badge on the front of the case.

Another thing to test, if you can, is to see if the ATAPI/IDE CD-ROM is working fine on something else, since being in storage. Have another IDE Mac to test it in? Check the voltage on the molex is proper?

get the happy Mac and then the drives ejects the disks
FWIW, I've never had luck with floppies and the 4400/7220/StarMax/et al. even with the Apple Disk Tools images. Another route would be a Floppy Emu, but I wouldn't invest just for this single use case.


This may be unrelated, but how fresh is the PRAM battery? still getting between 3–4.5V on it? Some sources say you can't even booth without it, but that reminds me of another thing you could try: tap the CUDA reset button for good measure.
 

CTB

Well-known member
The PRAM battery is new and reads 4.5v. It would not boot at all without the battery.

I burnt the CD (CD-R) on an old MacBook with SuperDrive. The slowest speed it offered was 10x so I burnt at that as I was aware there could be issues with faster burns.

As a project I plan on resurrecting my 7220, my 4400, my StarMax 3000 and my UMAX APUS 2000, that as you said are all essentially the same machine, so I need to get this right.
I have a BMOW floppy EMU for my Apple IIs. I didn’t think of using that. However I don’t think it supports HD floppies.

I will try and find a machine that has a slower burner and also test the CD-ROM drive. I have a few blue and white G3s and an LC630 so that might work.

I got it to boot from a scsi2sd external but it currently has 7.5.5 on it so I got the “This machine doesn’t support…” error so it does boot that far. It was also installed via a Colour Classic so probably 68K only. Anyone know how to get a PPC bootable System onto a scsi2sd via a colour classic? I have all the software and network etc, I just don’t know if it can be done from a 68K machine.
 

jessenator

Well-known member
I didn’t think of using that. However I don’t think it supports HD floppies.
At least on mine you can switch between Apple // mode and Mac/Lisa mode, which will happily do 400k-1.4M :) You might need to read up on the documentation, as I think you need to wipe or swap microSD cards, as it's Either-Or, for the operating modes.


The slowest speed it offered was 10x
If you tracked down a copy of Adaptec Toast (I think there's one on MacGarden that doesn't require a number...) that should allow you to write at 1x or something lower than 10x. I'm surprised Mac OS doesn't let you choose that natively, but it's been ages... Actually now I think about it, that was the main reason I switched to Toast Titanium 7, which is what I've used since I got my Mac Pro in '06, but it's worked on every version of X I use on it (10.4-10.7).

If the USPS could to ship to AUS right now, I'd media mail you several discs! *sigh*

7.5.5 on it so I got the “This machine doesn’t support…” error so it does boot that far.
Yeah 😖 7.5.5 just wasn't supported for some reason on the LPX-40/Tanzania models. You could try to make a universal install of 7.5.3 onto it—it's bulky as all get out, but it might do the trick.


edit: also, for storage, I'm a huge fan of the CF card arrangement, nice and easy to swap it around and not have compatibility issues. It's incredibly fast as well, as long as you've got a non-basic card.
This was from a few tests with MacBench 4 (ignore the redundant PLL jumper tests I was doing there, but compared to a PowerTower Pro and a 9500 for the disk suite)
CjH8gT7.png

Granted, that's an aggregate score on a UDMA 7 CF card, here's the individual:
i6TeRHp.png
 
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LaPorta

Well-known member
Maybe I don't understand this, but what does the burn speed have to do with anything? As long as the tracks are laid down at the same intervals, the spacing should be the same and read at the same speed.
 

jessenator

Well-known member
what does the burn speed have to do with anything?
Like I say, your mileage may vary. It's worked for me, where a max burn speed hasn't, and that's as far as I can take it, sadly. It's not something I can empirically sort out. It stems from my days of burning audio for older, OE car stereos because iPods hadn't come around yet :p I would like to know one way or the other, but let's keep that for another thread :)
 

Franklinstein

Well-known member
If I had to guess (and that's basically what I'm doing here because I am not an optical drive engineer), I'd say the speed of the burn correlates to the intensity of the burn: faster burns spend less time burning the pits, so it may be a little harder for older drives to make out, especially since there may be a little bit of a blur or distortion of the pit itself at very high speeds. Also a burned disc's pits look quite a bit messier than that of a pressed disc, not only because they're simple color changes of a dye layer (or crystalline phase change on a CDRW) compared to a reflective foil coating, but because they're moving as they're created. Modern drives can compensate for this but older units aren't programmed to and so don't know what to make of it.
On that note, quality media is also important: cheap dyes don't burn or reflect as well as the good stuff, so don't expect the $10 100-pack Warehouse Special to be as good as reputable name-brand media.

UMAX APUS 2000
This is actually an Alchemy board, not Tanzania. They do have similar specs but on closer inspection there are major differences with the biggest being the RAM (these use standard 5v buffered EDO where Tanzania uses 3.3v unbuffered) and video subsystem (Tanzania's ATI chip vs. Alchemy's Apple Valkyrie AR, which PowerComputing's Alchemy variant omits in favor of their own ATI-based solution).
Possible confusion may come from the fact that these UMAX and PCC systems are Alchemy but they don't use the standard drawer-loading logic board: they took the Alchemy board's chips and put them on their own custom boards.
 

CTB

Well-known member
If I had to guess (and that's basically what I'm doing here because I am not an optical drive engineer), I'd say the speed of the burn correlates to the intensity of the burn: faster burns spend less time burning the pits, so it may be a little harder for older drives to make out, especially since there may be a little bit of a blur or distortion of the pit itself at very high speeds. Also a burned disc's pits look quite a bit messier than that of a pressed disc, not only because they're simple color changes of a dye layer (or crystalline phase change on a CDRW) compared to a reflective foil coating, but because they're moving as they're created. Modern drives can compensate for this but older units aren't programmed to and so don't know what to make of it.
On that note, quality media is also important: cheap dyes don't burn or reflect as well as the good stuff, so don't expect the $10 100-pack Warehouse Special to be as good as reputable name-brand media.


This is actually an Alchemy board, not Tanzania. They do have similar specs but on closer inspection there are major differences with the biggest being the RAM (these use standard 5v buffered EDO where Tanzania uses 3.3v unbuffered) and video subsystem (Tanzania's ATI chip vs. Alchemy's Apple Valkyrie AR, which PowerComputing's Alchemy variant omits in favor of their own ATI-based solution).
Possible confusion may come from the fact that these UMAX and PCC systems are Alchemy but they don't use the standard drawer-loading logic board: they took the Alchemy board's chips and put them on their own custom boards.
Good to know. I genuinely thought they were Tanzania boards. I did note they used 5v RAM so I thought something might be up.
 

CTB

Well-known member
At least on mine you can switch between Apple // mode and Mac/Lisa mode, which will happily do 400k-1.4M :) You might need to read up on the documentation, as I think you need to wipe or swap microSD cards, as it's Either-Or, for the operating modes.



If you tracked down a copy of Adaptec Toast (I think there's one on MacGarden that doesn't require a number...) that should allow you to write at 1x or something lower than 10x. I'm surprised Mac OS doesn't let you choose that natively, but it's been ages... Actually now I think about it, that was the main reason I switched to Toast Titanium 7, which is what I've used since I got my Mac Pro in '06, but it's worked on every version of X I use on it (10.4-10.7).

If the USPS could to ship to AUS right now, I'd media mail you several discs! *sigh*


Yeah 😖 7.5.5 just wasn't supported for some reason on the LPX-40/Tanzania models. You could try to make a universal install of 7.5.3 onto it—it's bulky as all get out, but it might do the trick.


edit: also, for storage, I'm a huge fan of the CF card arrangement, nice and easy to swap it around and not have compatibility issues. It's incredibly fast as well, as long as you've got a non-basic card.
This was from a few tests with MacBench 4 (ignore the redundant PLL jumper tests I was doing there, but compared to a PowerTower Pro and a 9500 for the disk suite)
CjH8gT7.png

Granted, that's an aggregate score on a UDMA 7 CF card, here's the individual:
i6TeRHp.png
I have this. It was sent to my directly from Stratos in error when I ordered a SCSI one. Even better it was free. It is SD but does look pretty heavy duty.
 

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jessenator

Well-known member
I have this.
Interesting. I've never used IDE -> SD card devices before. But if you've got it, and it was free, sure! Tell us how it works for you.

I picked CF since nearly all of them are passive / pin adapters, and I had spare CF cards laying around. Use what you have on hand when you can, I say ;)
1645629079029.png
 

CTB

Well-known member
Are these readily available? I want to purchase one that I know works. What model is this?
 

jessenator

Well-known member
What model is this?
They're fairly generic copies of (probably) an original, but there isn't much to them, besides some voltage regulation it looks like.
I know this is a US listing, but this is the one I bought. https://www.ebay.com/itm/111977195791

I also got a PCI slot-insert model which is handy: not the precise listing, but this is very similar https://www.ebay.com/itm/233659936880

I'm sure you're aware, but these CompactFlash, not SecureDigital (SD) devices ;) Sorry if that's a bit condescending, but it isn't meant that way!

Also, since Apple's IDE implementation was ...not complete/robust, master/slave mode isn't supported, blah blah blah, you probably already know this, but it's something worth noting, as it frustrated me the first time I was using them, just getting the correct pin jumpering: some have markings on both sides of the PCB, and the silkscreening doesn't always reflect that. Also, I've found that certain cards prefer a different voltage jumper, even though I've been told CF cards accept both 3.3 and 5 V.
 

LaPorta

Well-known member
IDE -> SD has worked for me better than the CF variety, actually. I have IDE-SD working in my PB1400, one of the most finicky, with no configuration and no hassle.
 

CTB

Well-known member
Thanks for all the solutions. IDE-SD, Floppy EMU and slower CD burn. I will hopefully give these solutions a go on the weekend. I need to find a machine with a working CD and floppy drive first so I can work out why everything is failing.
 
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