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Rev. 2 B&W refusing to boot from anything

John8520

Well-known member
Hey Guys,

I picked up what I thought was a great deal on a B&W off craigslist last night, and now I can't help but wonder if it's cursed. The previous owner said it worked a few years ago when he last used it, but we all know how that goes.... 

Anyway, here's what I know so far. Also, I know that there's more testing that I need to do, but I wanted to go ahead and throw this post out there in case anyone here has seen similar behavior or has any additional suggestions.  

Machine specs:

B&W G3, rev 2 mobo., original G3/400MHz, 4x 256MB centon branded sticks (all matched), 16MB rage 128 (original). No other cards present, unless testing with SATA devices. 

Hard Drives I've tested with: (all with 9.2.2 installed)

- 10GB apple marked ATA quantum

- 80GB seagate ATA

- 160GB apple marked maxtor SATA

Optical Drives: (trying to boot from 9.0.4 and 9.2.1 burned disks

- original CD-ROM

- original DVD-ROM pulled from sawtooth

- original pioneer superdrive pulled from Mac Pro

- LG branded SATA superdrive

The SATA drives were connected using a SIL3112 card with a mac ROM. The card boots in my 7600 and Sawtooth so I know it's mac friendly. 

Here's the behavior I'm seeing: when it boots, (it doesn't always chime), it goes straight to a grey screen, and after a few seconds it gives me folder icon that blinks between the ? and happy mac for a few seconds. If an ATA HDD is attached, I see the ATA activity LED blink a bit, then the blinking stops and it hangs on the folder with the happy mac. 

Essentially, this behavior is the same no matter what I try and boot from. For example, if I try and boot from a CD (and no HDD is connected) the machine will turn on, go to grey screen, blink between ? and happy mac for a while, then the CD will spin up and start to seek, and as soon as it starts to load, the blinking stops and it sticks on the happy mac/folder icon.

A few miscellaneous notes: 

- When I try and do a PRAM reset, (Cmd-Opt-P-R), I can only get it to chime one additional time. After that, it just sits a a black screen. I have to press the reset button to get it back.

- I can get into open firmware (Cmd-Opt-O-F) without issues. I have done many reset-nvram / set-defaults / reset-all sequences to no avail.

- I'm using two different keyboards and mice. One keyboard is an 1999 iMac USB keyboard w/ puck mouse, the other is a Macally iKey keyboard with logitech trackball. All of these devices work fine on the Sawtooth, and I have tried different combinations including no keyboard/mouse present at all. I haven't tested with an ADB keyboard yet, but I will for the sake of thoroughness. 

- I am not able to get to the option key boot menu. 

- I have tried both "mac-boot" and "boot cd" (which I don't think works on macs, just Sun workstations) and I get somewhat weird behavior. (It just hangs at these screens)

- - mac-boot: https://www.dropbox.com/s/mhx8bu5u8nxm76b/2017-10-18%2021.48.21.jpg?dl=0

- - boot cd: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xuthl53pytjd4y6/2017-10-18%2021.55.07.jpg?dl=0

Here's testing that I know I still need to do. Once it's done I'll report back.

- test with OS X install media

- test with a known good PRAM battery

- test the centon RAM in the Sawtooth

- put a stick of the (known good) Sawtooth RAM into the B&W

- test with Sawtooth PSU (if they're compatible, I need to check pinouts first) 

- Test with an ADB keyboard

 

John8520

Well-known member
Resolved.... it was the PRAM battery!

Putting in a charged battery resolved the issue entirely.

 

nglevin

Well-known member
I've been able to use my B&W rev 2 without any PRAM battery, Maxell paranoia perhaps getting the best of me. It boots Mac OS 9.2.2 right up without any complaints.

Rhapsody was a bit harder, between the OS being more touchy about disk partitioning and Rhapsody's custom boot process requiring PRAM adjustments. So long as the computer was plugged in, the PRAM battery wasn't necessary, but as soon as I left it unplugged for a few minutes... :p

 

Unknown_K

Well-known member
PPC towers that start acting weird like that tend to have a bad RAM stick or some other hardware issue.

 
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John8520

Well-known member
I booted a MacTest Pro disk for this machine and did a full RAM and hardware test, and nothing came up bad. Not really sure what to make of it, honestly, but right now it's performing perfectly fine. 

I am still unable to get into the option key boot menu though, that's kind of weird, but a minor concern.

EDIT: I also was able to bump it from 400 to 450MHz last night and that's running perfectly stable as well (without additional cooling, even). Usually overclocking exacerbates any existing hardware issues but I haven't seen anything like that yet.

 
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