Beige G3 Locks Up at Welcome to Macintosh Screen?

[trag]

I suspect I have a corrupt system and need to do a reinstall, but figured I ask here in case someone else has seen this and has an easier fix.

I was experimenting with various hacked PCI cards last night. Install them. Boot the G3. Look at ASP. Shut down.

Now, when I boot in OS 9.1 I get the grey Welcome to Macintosh screen. Then the background appears and the progress bar with the Welcome to Macintosh rectangle. The progress bar make a little bit of progress and then the machine locks up. I can see the moment it locks up by wiggling the mouse and watching with the cursor either stops moving or disappears altogether.

No extensions icons appear. It's earlier than that.

However, it booted a few times by holding down the Shift key. Other times, it didn't help.

Booting into OSX (10.2.8) also locks up after the screen goes from gray with spinning thingy to blue.

That kind of suggests a hardware problem. But I've removed the experimental cards. Tried zapping PRAM. Held down the CUDA switch with it unplugged and no battery installed.

The only PCI card remaining is an Acard 6280M which supports the three hard drives.

It makes me wonder if the logic board suddenly decided it needs to be recapped in the middle of my experiments. It was working super-reliably until last night. Sigh.

 

[trag]

This is the spot at which it locks up.

 

[macuserman]

I mean this is a dumb response, but you didn't explicitly say if you had already tried it or not. But did you try seeing if it will go any further with your extensions disabled?

 

[cheesestraws]

I had a crash at exactly the same spot on the progress bar booting OS 9 when I'd been fiddling with the pericom bridge and got the mappings wrong in OF, and it was trying to poke hardware that didn't exist. I can't remember if on those machines an OF settings reset is the same as a PRAM reset but if it isn't, try that...

 

[trag]

I had a crash at exactly the same spot on the progress bar booting OS 9 when I'd been fiddling with the pericom bridge and got the mappings wrong in OF, and it was trying to poke hardware that didn't exist. I can't remember if on those machines an OF settings reset is the same as a PRAM reset but if it isn't, try that...

Shouldn't pressing the CUDA button for a while take care of that?

If not, how to perform OF settings reset, please?

 

[trag]

I mean this is a dumb response, but you didn't explicitly say if you had already tried it or not. But did you try seeing if it will go any further with your extensions disabled?

That was the "It booted a few times by holding down the Shift key." Shift key disables extensions. Worked a few times. Doesn't any more, apparently.

 

[cheesestraws]

Shouldn't pressing the CUDA button for a while take care of that?

Apparently not.... Had to look up how to do it on a G3, perhaps try this? http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20031208155258818

 

[trag]

Apparently not.... Had to look up how to do it on a G3, perhaps try this? http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20031208155258818

Excellent. Thankyou. I will try that when I get home.

More evidence for a hardware problem, I realized, is that the startup bong went from being robust to being barely audible. But it changed all at once. It doesn't seem like slow cap leakage would work abruptly like that.

It seems like every test machine I set up for testing hacked PCI cards finds some way to bail out on me. Getting paranoid.

But will try the OF reset. Maybe the sound settings got munged too.

 

[cheesestraws]

Oh dear. Munged chime sounds more like hardware than settings, yes. Still. Worth a try.

 

[jeremywork]

I'm relatively sure OS 9 runs a second memory test including a cache test at the point shown. Failing the cache test usually produces a message to contact a service technician, so I'd start by pulling some of the RAM to see if it's stable in a reduced configuration.

If you were able to get into the OS at any point, the saved OS sound level will be copied into NVRAM to make the chime volume match the user volume. If it sounds mangled, you may be on the right track with recapping.

 

[olePigeon]

Could it be the VRM? Did you upgrade the CPU in it?

 

[MJ313]

Can you boot from an install CD and run the hard drive repair utility to see if its corrupted? This happened to me with a bad card in my G3 MT. Removing it, going back to normal IDE drive and reformatting fixed the issue.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

It’s almost like you were writing about my exact issues last night between 7pm and 1:30am this morning. I had the very same issue.

However, it started off with the battery being drained and I replaced it. Managed to get it booted to a grey screen with a single underline in top left corner.

After numerous PRAM and CUDA resets I got it to boot to flashing disk icon.

Eventually, I managed to get it to boot Mac OS 9.1 off a Jaz disk to the exact problem you’re having. It just failed to boot, and froze on the boot screen (frozen mouse pointer too). The only OS I could boot was Mac OS 8.1 with great difficulty.

After an entire evening wasted trying to figure this thing out, as I was going to bed I remembered that I had a spare G3 personality card. I plugged it in, ALL problems immediately went away.

 

[trag]

Oh dear. Munged chime sounds more like hardware than settings, yes. Still. Worth a try.

Yep, tried the OF reset you referenced. It was cool issuing OF commands and getting the terse 'ok' back, but it did not affect the problem. Thank you anyway. I've saved that for other problems. OF settings are saved in an SRAM chip, so removing battery and power and pressing the CUDA chip should drain all power from the SRAM and cause it to go blank, so I figured it was a long shot, but well worth a try. It was the easiest of the possible solutions.

so I'd start by pulling some of the RAM to see if it's stable in a reduced configuration.

I only have one 256MB stick of memory installed. I tried reseating it. Also tried moving it to a different slot. I managed to get the machine to not boot at all -- no happy mac -- but no improvement. I think I had dust in the slot for that. Once I blew the dust out, behavior went back to as before.

Perhaps I should try replacing it. I have three, but only keep one installed to make testing faster.

Could it be the VRM? Did you upgrade the CPU in it?

Not recently. Years ago I installed a NewerTech G3/500 upgrade. The VRM could be failing from age, but it was working fine up until a few days ago. I guess everything works fine up until it fails....

Can you boot from an install CD and run the hard drive repair utility to see if its corrupted? This happened to me with a bad card in my G3 MT. Removing it, going back to normal IDE drive and reformatting fixed the issue.

That is one of the things I'm thinking about. All three hard drives are on an Acard 6280M (one OS 9.1 drive, one 10.2.8 drive, one data-only drive). IIRC, the optical drive is on one of the internal IDE busses. So I should see if it will boot from a CD. The main reason I haven't tried that already is that the machine is laying on its side for easy open/shut of the case, and I'm going to have to rearrange a bit to stand it up vertically to get to the optical drive.

It’s almost like you were writing about my exact issues last night between 7pm and 1:30am this morning. I had the very same issue.

After an entire evening wasted trying to figure this thing out, as I was going to bed I remembered that I had a spare G3 personality card. I plugged it in, ALL problems immediately went away.

I've been wondering if the problem might reside on the personality card. The fact that the boot sound went from inaudible, to normal and now back to inaudible suggests issues near the sound circuitry, and that's on the personality card, yes?

I know i have another one around somewhere. One of those boxes in the attic. Sigh. I'll have to look it up in the inventory. It might be easier to try recapping this card than it will be to get the box with the spare out of the attic.



BTW, I tried booting with the Shift key down (extensions disabled) again, as @macuserman 's question keeps ringing a bit. I managed to boot with extensions disabled. This time, while I had it booted, I used Extension Manager to disable *ALL* the extensions and CPs. On rebooting, it froze at teh same place. Further attempts with the Shift key down didn't boot. That's weirdly intermittent.

I think disabling extensions also disables some functionality beyond just the loadable extensions. Seems like I read that somewhere, years ago. This seems to support that theory.

Anyway, thank you for all the infromation and suggestions and don't hesitate to add ideas if you think of anything else.

I guess I'll try booting from an install CD and if that doesn't work, I'll start playing hardware. Cut the cr$%$%p out of my finger on that mesh metal just inside the PCI slot opening metal last night. I think the machine tried to skin me.

 

[macuserman]

@trag I do hope you weren’t insulted by my question and I am sorry I didn’t catch that you had already tried that.

 

[MrFahrenheit]

In my case, the logic board seemed to be completely glitchy and buggy without a personality card. There was no sound without the card (even though plugged into the internal speaker connector). That means all sound circuitry runs through that card.

When I was trying to boot it without the personality card, it would freeze at the exact same point on various Mac OS versions. The older the version, the further it got. Mac OS 8.1 would actually boot without the personality card, but was horribly unstable.

All other Mac OS would fail to boot properly. I had posted a question about Mac OS 9 versions compatible with the board, and most people had said theirs was fine and worked good. So I chalked it up to being a glitchy board or bad memory.

However, once I discovered the personality card being absent was causing issues, I installed it, and every Mac OS version I tried previously that was freezing on boot instantly worked perfectly. I don't know if this is the solution for you, but it may very well be.

Try booting your G3 without the personality card, and with a universal install of Mac OS 8.1.

 

[trag]

@trag I do hope you weren’t insulted by my question and I am sorry I didn’t catch that you had already tried that.

No, not at all. I appreciate all the help. I feared I was too abrupt in my reply and so wanted to get an extra shout-out to you there.