How a $70 Conquest Became A Free Conquest

[TheIanMan85]

You're certainly welcome on the manual. Agreed on the Genius Bar. Looking into the manual it seems to agree with what we've talked about.

Hard Drive1 Make sure power adapter is connected.

2 Disconnect external SCSI devices.

3 Check hard drive connection.

4 Check connectors for cracks and replace if damaged. 5 Replace hard drive.

6 Replace I/O logic board.

That was from "Internal hard drive does not spin" but the process seems logical for this situation. Didn't read every page, but saw another boot failure flow that had about the same to say.

As for the power problems, I'd say borrow or buy another known good compatible charger. Hopefully that fixes it. If not you've got yourself a spare compatible with the 1400-Pismo if I recall correctly, plus some (all?) Duos...that's off memory. Someone correct me if I'm wrong. If not it's time to start replacing on the inside.

That's what I've got for the moment! :b&w:

 

[jruschme]

The weird thing about this unit is the green indicator power lamp does not remain lit when the computer boots, and on a cold start (i.e., the computer has been powered down for a few hours), I hear the startup bong, but no activity from either the HD or the CD drive occurs until after about a minute.

The long delay after the extended powerdown sounds like the PRAM battery, but also sounds pretty normal. I defer to the experts, but I think there is some kind of extended self-test going on.

The power light issue is somewhat interesting. My old Wallstreet would never show a power light (or charge its main battery or let me use the volume ad brightness buttons. I finally ended up replacing the topcase in order to replace the PMU. (Basically, the light, buttons and PRAM all come togeher in one board located under the wrist rest.) Everything worked great after that.

 

[theos911]

My Wallstreet's PRAM is dead and the brightness buttons do not work under 10.4, oddly enough, the volume buttons do.

 

[Bunsen]

My interpretation is: there's nothing wrong with the HD or the cable - you can read and write to it when you booted from a CD. It's most likely that the System installed on the HD is simply not capable of booting a Wallstreet. Did you try starting it up with extensions off? (hold down shift while booting) If not, please do, and tell us what you find.

Next bet would be that you need a driver for the G4 upgrade. Download and install that and try again.

My second suggestion would be: Wallstreet is Old World ROM, and iBook is New World - it loads the ROM file from the HD into RAM on boot. Find the ROM file, and move it to the desktop (or anywhere else outside the System Folder), then try booting (with extensions off if it fails first go). It may be clashing with the motherboard ROM (I have no idea really, but worth a try).

If that fails, I suggest reinstalling OS 9 from CD to the HD while it is in the Wallstreet.

 

[Concorde1993]

The long delay after the extended powerdown sounds like the PRAM battery

I haven't checked the PRAM battery yet, but that's another possibility.

My Wallstreet's PRAM is dead and the brightness buttons do not work under 10.4, oddly enough, the volume buttons do.

I have no control over the brightness, and volume on either HD.

It's most likely that the System installed on the HD is simply not capable of booting a Wallstreet.

Perhaps. I was under the assumption that the 20GB IBM drive was dead, since I would hear it spin up, and down (and that delay didn't make a good first impression, either). I can swap the 40 with the 20 again, since that one has all of the drivers for the G4 card already installed, and has the latest version of Jaguar (if that makes a difference).

Did you try starting it up with extensions off?

No, but I'll give it a try later tonight.

 

[insaneboy]

My Wallstreet's PRAM is dead and the brightness buttons do not work under 10.4, oddly enough, the volume buttons do.

IIRC there is something about OSX and brightness controls on the wallstreet not getting along. I had brightness control issues running OSX, but booted into OS 9 all was fine.

 

[bibilit]

the green indicator light does not remain lit when starting up the unit

I can be wrong, as i have not booted my Wallstreet for a long period, but if i can remember the green indicator is only lit when the powerbook is on "sleep" status.(it's a sleep indicator indeed)

As for the battery, there is no indicator, except for the row of lights on the side of the battery.(four units)

My Wallstreet has the brightness trouble under 10.2, never had under Mac Os 9.2.

it shuts itself off after a couple of minutes

Can the G4 board be in fault ? (becoming hot and just shutting itself after a couple of minutes)

Concerning the HD, i agree with that

I suggest reinstalling OS 9 from CD to the HD while it is in the Wallstreet.

Last but not least, did you try to reset the Wallstreet (Shift-fn-Control-Power button) ?

 

[theos911]

I can be wrong, as i have not booted my Wallstreet for a long period, but if i can remember the green indicator is only lit when the powerbook is on "sleep" status.(it's a sleep indicator indeed)

You are correct. The light blinks during sleep and is off otherwise.

Can the G4 board be in fault ? (becoming hot and just shutting itself after a couple of minutes)

My G4 upgrade, the same one he has (the one I got from JDW) produces a lot of heat, but it doesn't affect the CPU. The heat gets the RAM so hot it starts getting memory errors and they eventually err on an OS occupied part of RAM and the system freezes.

 

[Concorde1993]

(it's a sleep indicator indeed)

Thanks for the clarification, bibilit. I've never owned a PB G3 laptop before, thus I had assumed that the green indicator lamp referred to the unit being powered up, and not in hibernation mode. I have a green power indicator lamp on my Thinkpad laptops, which remain on when the computer is running. Some Thinkpad models have a crescent-shaped moon indicator that lights up when the computer is in hibernation mode. It's unfortunate that the PBs didn't adopt a similar feature.

My G4 upgrade, the same one he has (the one I got from JDW) produces a lot of heat, but it doesn't affect the CPU.

I can confirm that the Sonnet G4 card does generate quite a bit of heat in a brief amount of time, but I haven't had the computer running to the extent where the RAM modules start to overheat (interesting to note anyway).

As stated earlier, Bunsen suggested checking the PRAM battery, as that may be the cause of the intermittent boot issues. I did some searching around on Google after returning from work, and it appears that if the battery is dead, the computer will generate the same symptoms that I've documented in this thread. I've provided one link just as a reference: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/3421894?start=0&tstart=0

As a result, I'm going to remove the PRAM battery, and place in the 20GB drive that came with the unit. If it can boot without the presence of a PRAM battery, then this PB does have some hope after all. If not, I'll have to purchase a new PRAM battery from the 'Bay, and go from there.