Need help diagnosing a Beige PowerMacintosh G3

[Inter9221]

I am new here so forgive me if I'm posting in the wrong place.

I have a PowerMacintosh G3 Desktop that is exhibiting very strange behavior. When I first received it, I installed OS 9.2.2 successfully and the machine was working great. Now, things aren't as happy. The machine wouldn't boot into OS9, and since I installed it on a IDE to SD adapter, it's not a broken HDD. So I tried to repair the installation with the install CD, and the computer displays the attached image. Since then, the computer has lost its chime (I've used two working speakers to test this), and sometimes refuses to boot.

Here's a list of everything I've tried to replace

Tested two PSU's and verified that they are working

Replaced CPUs, ROMs, and VRMs from an identical motherboard

Reset PRAM, NVRAM, and SMU

Changed Disk Drives (Only one of them works)

Burned multiple OS9 install CDs from different images

I even bought a working, tested motherboard off of Ebay, and the exact same problem happens!

Am I frying motherboards by doing something stupid? I would love some help here or if someone knows a better forum that I can crosspost this too it would be much appreciated.

 

[Brett B.]

Just curious... could it be a stuck key on the keyboard?  Have you tried a different keyboard or no keyboard at all?

 

[ppcoutlaw]

it could be a component issue. If you are using the second mobo, and have transferred all the components from the other board, that is to say the ram, CPU, video ram if any, any PCI bus cards, and the problem persists, then it is likely one of two problems, considering the exhaustive work you have done. Either both boards have the exact same issue, or the problem lies with a transferred component. I call it migration of the problem to another platform. I encountered this on a PC with a relatively new cdrom. It ceased to boot. Nothing I did reveled the problem and so I gave up on the PC I was working on, and moved everything to another PC. The problem reoccurred there. It was the cdrom causing the issue.

If your machine halts at the same screen every time, I would look at two areas. The ram is my primary guess, as it might be choking on a bad address on one of the memory sticks. My second guess is that somehow it could be a.bad hard drive data cable. They can fail. How is this possible, as it just a ribbon cable that only moves when you add or remove a hard drive. I do not know. I only know from experience that it happens.

Make sure your ram is properly seated. If the problem persists, clean the contacts on the ram. Next, try limiting the machine to one stick of ram at boot, and switching out that stick if the problem occurs again. You may wish to have some extra compatible ram to use in testing. I worked at a PC recycler and I used pc133 I'm my as it is backwards compatible and was readily available when i got my two bmt units.

Also, perhaps clean the contacts on your PCI cards, and maybe the personality card. Also, there is another possibility, though I do not think it is the issue at hand, is the caps on the mobo. I remember seeing a post about someone recapping their beige.

Both of my bmts have been excellent machines so far. Good luck in getting yours back up from the dead.

 

[demik]

Are the caps any good ?

 

[Inter9221]

Just curious... could it be a stuck key on the keyboard?  Have you tried a different keyboard or no keyboard at all?

I have tried without a keyboard plugged in, same issues.

Are the caps any good ?

Visually, I have no reason to suspect that they were bad. For the second motherboard, the Ebay seller said he tested it powered on for an hour, and they both look immaculate. It could be an issue though. Can you test that with a regular multimeter?

it could be a component issue. If you are using the second mobo, and have transferred all the components from the other board, that is to say the ram, CPU, video ram if any, any PCI bus cards, and the problem persists, then it is likely one of two problems, considering the exhaustive work you have done. Either both boards have the exact same issue, or the problem lies with a transferred component. I call it migration of the problem to another platform. I encountered this on a PC with a relatively new cdrom. It ceased to boot. Nothing I did reveled the problem and so I gave up on the PC I was working on, and moved everything to another PC. The problem reoccurred there. It was the cdrom causing the issue.

If your machine halts at the same screen every time, I would look at two areas. The ram is my primary guess, as it might be choking on a bad address on one of the memory sticks. My second guess is that somehow it could be a.bad hard drive data cable. They can fail. How is this possible, as it just a ribbon cable that only moves when you add or remove a hard drive. I do not know. I only know from experience that it happens.

Make sure your ram is properly seated. If the problem persists, clean the contacts on the ram. Next, try limiting the machine to one stick of ram at boot, and switching out that stick if the problem occurs again. You may wish to have some extra compatible ram to use in testing. I worked at a PC recycler and I used pc133 I'm my as it is backwards compatible and was readily available when i got my two bmt units.

Also, perhaps clean the contacts on your PCI cards, and maybe the personality card. Also, there is another possibility, though I do not think it is the issue at hand, is the caps on the mobo. I remember seeing a post about someone recapping their beige.

Both of my bmts have been excellent machines so far. Good luck in getting yours back up from the dead.

The Migration thing is probably what this is. The second motherboard did ship with new ram, but I can go ahead and play around with that as well. I did take out the personality card, and I will use a different CDROM cable and see if that's the issue.

 

[ppcoutlaw]

I never tried to run mine with out the personality card. If you fire it up without the wings card , or whichever one you have, it might freeze up. If that is what you mean by removing the card.

 

[Inter9221]

I never tried to run mine with out the personality card. If you fire it up without the wings card , or whichever one you have, it might freeze up. If that is what you mean by removing the card.

I will try that. Or I would, if I could get the computer to boot off the CD - now I get the dreaded question mark disk. I’m thinking the CDROM is bad, so I’ll order a replacement and give you guys an update.

 

[Brett B.]

What does your IDE setup look like?  Single drives per channel or multiple?  What ROM revision do you have?  I'm assuming you don't have any SCSI devices installed in the system?

Rev A ROMs are limited to one IDE device per channel... B and C are not.  

These things are really reliable, well designed machines but they have a few quirks.

 

[Inter9221]

What does your IDE setup look like?  Single drives per channel or multiple?  What ROM revision do you have?  I'm assuming you don't have any SCSI devices installed in the system?

Rev A ROMs are limited to one IDE device per channel... B and C are not.  

These things are really reliable, well designed machines but they have a few quirks.

I am staying far away from SCSI. As for IDE, I tried to mimic what the machine had plugged into already - HDD on the top port, CD on the bottom. I don’t know enough about IDE to know if it’s right or wrong.
 

I have several ROMs lying around - I can try swapping them. Is there a specific ROM version that only works on a certain board? Since the mac is missing it’s chime, I might have a misplaced ROM in there - how compatible are they with eachother?

 

[Brett B.]

You should be able to use any ROM version on any board...it is really only relevant to the IDE bus.

Maybe see what your jumpers are set to on the CD and HDD... IDE is very simple... you can do master, slave, or cable select, with a maximum of two devices per channel normally but only one per channel with a revision A ROM.  You can have master/slave, slave/master, cs/cs but NOT master/master, slave/slave.

I think you have to use cable select with rev A ROMs... seems like it gets confused if you set it to master or slave IIRC.

 

[Inter9221]

You should be able to use any ROM version on any board...it is really only relevant to the IDE bus.

Maybe see what your jumpers are set to on the CD and HDD... IDE is very simple... you can do master, slave, or cable select, with a maximum of two devices per channel normally but only one per channel with a revision A ROM.  You can have master/slave, slave/master, cs/cs but NOT master/master, slave/slave.

I think you have to use cable select with rev A ROMs... seems like it gets confused if you set it to master or slave IIRC.

I just got the machine to boot up via CD! Here is what I did:

The ROM revision is A, but I also have a "Wraith" rom that I might swap out. The drive was on Master, which is why I was getting a flashing question mark, so I moved it over to Cable Select, but still no dice. Then, I plugged back in the Wings card, and it booted via CD! It even got it's lovely chime back!

Another thing I've noticed is that the machine takes forever to boot - almost 30 seconds before it displays a happy mac, even on the newer ROM. Sometimes, it will go into a text mode and repeat either the phrase "no bootable HFS partition" or "can't OPEN", but then it eventually finds the media it needs. This only happened on the older "A" ROM, but I'll attach pictures here.

But besides that oddity, I can finally load into OS9! The ROM probably wants to see it's personality card in there to boot. Now I get to put everything back inside it's card and hope it still works!

Thank you very much!

 

[Brett B.]

Long time before POST is normal, especially if you've got a decent amount of memory installed... it's just performing a memory check.  Mine take forever; they have 768MB.  If you don't want to wait, you can hit Command, Control, Power right after the chime and it will skip the memory check.

See these two posts about those messages you're getting... it's the open firmware prompt.  Usually you never see that and don't need to mess with it unless you're installing OS X.

http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20031208155258818

https://lowendmac.com/2012/how-to-recover-from-a-beige-g3-startup-error/

 

[demik]

I never tried to run mine with out the personality card. If you fire it up without the wings card , or whichever one you have, it might freeze up. If that is what you mean by removing the card.

It does work without issues. Mine has worked without one for multiple years. You won't get any sound though.

 

[demik]

Visually, I have no reason to suspect that they were bad. For the second motherboard, the Ebay seller said he tested it powered on for an hour, and they both look immaculate. It could be an issue though. Can you test that with a regular multimeter?

Yes, only if your multimeter has a capacitor mode in it (If you want one that does, a good model is Fluxe 113). Judging by your others tests, tthe caps seems to be ok though.

Your OpenFirmware messages means that the Mac is trying to access a device that is slow to respond or inaccessible. This is usually a bad PRAM setting, but you did reset your PRAM.

What I'm thinking is that your IDE to SD adapter is too slow to respond. Theses machines are "too fast" to this king of hacking. Another guy had a similar issue with SCSI2SD in a beige G3 last week. The other possibility, as you said, is that the CDROM drive is dead.

Keep us updated

 

[Byrd]

More info on the Beige G3 ROM A/B IDE issues here:

https://www.macgurus.com/forums/showthread.php?17137-Beige-G3-master-slave-hard-drive-puzzle-please-help

In short, don't plug more than one device off one IDE cable and ensure each device is set to "master".  You can switch the ROM to a later revision should you wish, but you could also look into something like a PCI SATA card if you wanted to plug a more modern HD in without such ongoing issues.

I've never seen Open Firmware come up when there is an issue with booting (it'll usually just stay on a beige screen or the flashing question mark) - it suggests a deeper hardware or firmware issue to me.  Try resetting your NVRAM under Open Firmware and PRAM.