bano
Member
Hi everyone,
long time lurker, first post here.
I've recently found a fairly cheap Pismo in nice working conditions: felt in love with the machine, it's really a nice piece of hardware.
When I got it, the dvd drive had no issue seemingly - I installed Panther from an original cd without any hiccup.
Some days ago it started acting weirdly: the Pismo froze a couple of times during boot, then after some hours it froze again just as I inserted a cd in the drive, then at reboot started hanging while looking for the boot drive.
After some fiddling, I removed the drive module from the media bay, and the issue was gone. As soon as I reinserted the optical drive, the computer was frozen again.
To sum up, currently:
- If there's nothing (or a battery) in the media bay, the powerbook works just fine
- As I put a drive in the media bay, the computer after a few seconds hangs, including the mouse cursor - as soon as I remove the drive the cursor moves again (but the computer is still unresponsive)
- At boot, if there's a drive in the media bay, the computer hangs while looking for the boot drive; if I boot with the option key pressed, I get to the boot selection screen, but it freezes as soon as it seeks the dvd drive
- Also if I drop in open firmware, it hangs as soon as I try to access the dvd drive
I already tried all the catch-all suggestions (clear pram, clear nvram, remove pram battery, etc.). I also tried booting without hdd (it behaves the same, no surprise since the drives are on different ata buses).
Interestingly, I did also a test removing the dvd drive unit from the media bay drive enclosure, leaving just the little (passive) interface pcb: when I insert the module it just behaves the same, even if there's no actual dvd drive connected.
Looks like the issue is triggered as soon as the media bay is enabled, so from my understanding there should be something wrong on the logic board, possibly related to the i/o controller.
Now... after the utterly long post above (sorry), is there anyone that has faced the same issue?
Is there any known fault related to the Pismo media bay? I ask that 'cause I found a couple of old posts on the Apple forums (this and this) that describe the very same behaviour, but found no other mention of it on the whole interweb (68kmla included).
Still had no time to fully disassemble it and take a look at the logic board, even if I don't really expect to find any visible issue - if you have any hint, idea or possible solution, is definitely welcome.
Thanks in advance!
Kind regards,
Gabriele
long time lurker, first post here.
I've recently found a fairly cheap Pismo in nice working conditions: felt in love with the machine, it's really a nice piece of hardware.
When I got it, the dvd drive had no issue seemingly - I installed Panther from an original cd without any hiccup.
Some days ago it started acting weirdly: the Pismo froze a couple of times during boot, then after some hours it froze again just as I inserted a cd in the drive, then at reboot started hanging while looking for the boot drive.
After some fiddling, I removed the drive module from the media bay, and the issue was gone. As soon as I reinserted the optical drive, the computer was frozen again.
To sum up, currently:
- If there's nothing (or a battery) in the media bay, the powerbook works just fine
- As I put a drive in the media bay, the computer after a few seconds hangs, including the mouse cursor - as soon as I remove the drive the cursor moves again (but the computer is still unresponsive)
- At boot, if there's a drive in the media bay, the computer hangs while looking for the boot drive; if I boot with the option key pressed, I get to the boot selection screen, but it freezes as soon as it seeks the dvd drive
- Also if I drop in open firmware, it hangs as soon as I try to access the dvd drive
I already tried all the catch-all suggestions (clear pram, clear nvram, remove pram battery, etc.). I also tried booting without hdd (it behaves the same, no surprise since the drives are on different ata buses).
Interestingly, I did also a test removing the dvd drive unit from the media bay drive enclosure, leaving just the little (passive) interface pcb: when I insert the module it just behaves the same, even if there's no actual dvd drive connected.
Looks like the issue is triggered as soon as the media bay is enabled, so from my understanding there should be something wrong on the logic board, possibly related to the i/o controller.
Now... after the utterly long post above (sorry), is there anyone that has faced the same issue?
Is there any known fault related to the Pismo media bay? I ask that 'cause I found a couple of old posts on the Apple forums (this and this) that describe the very same behaviour, but found no other mention of it on the whole interweb (68kmla included).
Still had no time to fully disassemble it and take a look at the logic board, even if I don't really expect to find any visible issue - if you have any hint, idea or possible solution, is definitely welcome.
Thanks in advance!
Kind regards,
Gabriele