Sonnet Encore 1GHz G4 in Gigabit G4 - OS X ✅ OS 9 ❌

[Gothikon]

Hi,

I’ve a PowerMac G4 gigabit model with:
- Radeon 8500
- 60GB M2 SSD with some adapters to work on the internal IDE bus
- 1GB RAM (2x 512MB DIMMs)
- a SCSI card
- stock optical drive and a zip drive
- firmware 4.2.8f1
- No PRAM battery

With the stock Apple 400MHz CPU:
- Everything appears stable in OS 9 and OS X i.e. clicking around and running apps for an hour without anything crashing

With the Sonnet Encore 1GHz G4
- OS X is fine, browsed the web for 15 minutes
- Classic in OS X is fine, installed some apps
- However, OS 9 will not boot consistently.

9/10 when trying to boot OS 9.2.2. it gets stuck before the happy mac icon. I get a grey screen and can move the pointer but that’s it. On one occasion after using classic and restarting to OS 9 from OS X I got the desktop and things seemed to be running fine. I thought messing around with extensions or rebuilding the desktop might have done something to fix it so restarted from OS 9 -> OS 9 but got stuck before the happy mac icon again.

Other issues:
- The startup disk chooser also locks up after displaying both partitions. I can only get back to OS X by resetting things in Open Firmware again.

Halp, plz What issues would impact OS 9 and the boot drive selector but not OS X or the classic environment?

 

[joshc]

Have you got the Sonnet extension installed for OS 9 and set to run before anything else (put some spaces at the start of the extension file name). I think you also need the Apple CPU extension as well.

I had the exact same problem and it took a bit of messing around with that extension before things would play nicely.

What firmware is your G4 using?

 

[cheesestraws]

Now that's interesting. I have only a couple of suggestions of what I'd do next personally, rather than concrete experience:

• Did you install OS 9 before or after the upgrade? Is it missing a component necessary for newer processors?
• What happens if you try to boot from an 9 CD? Probably that universal eMac 9.2 one that can apparently boot anything...
• Can one reproduce the crash in the disk chooser by poking around in OF?

 

[Gothikon]

Firmware is 4.2.8f1

ill double check the extensions setup tomorrow however, I’m assuming it’s not an extensions issue as it usually fails before the happy Mac. Also, I thought I read in one version of the sonnetencore manual that the1GHz model -7455 I believe -doesn’t require the firmware update or any extensions.

i’ll also give an OS 9 cd a shot too.

 

[Gothikon]

Digging out an old thread

The Sawtooth G4 has made it out of storage and I've got most of my other vintage macs up and running so this has just made it to the top of the pile.

FWIW the machine is setup as follows:
- Flashed PC ATI Radeon 8500 64MB
- Solid state IDE drive (one of the industrial ones that goes straight in the IDE socket) with OS 9.2.2
- 1GB RAM
- Sonnet extension installed
- 4.2.8f1 firmware
- External firewire drive with a couple of partitions

The machine still uns happily with the stock G4 400 CPU in OS 9.

The machine will hang when attempting to boot OS 9.2.2 (from solid state IDE, or the Mac OS 9 lives version from the FW drive).

The machine is currently installing OS 10.2 from original install disks on the FW drive and so far so good it's 90% finished.

I did a bit of googling and I found this thread https://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=4281.0
Specifically user GaryN says "My MDD refused to boot in OS9 until i was given this file to replace the one that was native to OS 9.2.2
It appears - on the surface at least - to be nothing more than a standard "Apple CPU Plugins" file although an earlier version than the one I had.
All I know is that when installed in place of the other one, suddenly my computer started booting OS9 with no trouble.
I suspect that the CPUP resource has been altered to include code or CPU model #s not in the original."

When 10.2 has finished installing I won't have to keep reverting to the stock CPU for troubleshooting and I'll check the version of "Apple CPU Plugins". Next step will be to try the magical eMac restore disc.

I'm posting this now partly to make troubleshooting in future a bit easier.

Who's got experience with different versions of Apple CPU Plugins?

 

[Gothikon]

So, booting from 10.2 on the FW drive happily.

Mac OS 9.2.2 on the internal IDE currently has Apple CPU plugins 3.7, Mac OS CPU Software 4.9 from April 2002.

 

[treellama]

My Sawtooth has an ST G4 1000, boots 9.2.2, and I've never messed with Apple CPU plugins. First I've heard of them.

 

[Gothikon]

Well I just tried version 3.0, 3.7 and 4.0. 4.0 seems to work! It booted to the desktop the first time then crashed, I did have the FW drive connected with 3 partitions (including 1 with the Mac OS 9 lives version of OS 9 installed) and a USB drive plugged in.
I shut the machine down, removed all the external drives leaving only the internal solid state, zapped the PRAM and it's booted to the desktop quite happily.
I'll do some stress testing tomorrow and see if I can narrow things down a bit further.
I'm still a bit suspicious as the machine would look up on the boot drive selector (holding down option at boot). But I wonder if there's something special about the Apple CPU extension or when it loads i.e. does i impact the boot selector screen somehow...

 

[treellama]

I used to get random crashes with the ST G4 in multiple machines. I removed the heatsink and re-applied heatsink paste, and put it back together. Have not had a problem since.

 

[Gothikon]

Spoke too soon. Can't boot in to OS 9 anymore.

I reapplied the thermal paste not so long ago, but i'll give it another shot. The fact that I installed and ran 10.2 for about an hour makes thermals seem like an unlikely issue though.

More tinkering tomorrow

 

[DarthNvader]

Well I just tried version 3.0, 3.7 and 4.0. 4.0 seems to work! It booted to the desktop the first time then crashed, I did have the FW drive connected with 3 partitions (including 1 with the Mac OS 9 lives version of OS 9 installed) and a USB drive plugged in.
I shut the machine down, removed all the external drives leaving only the internal solid state, zapped the PRAM and it's booted to the desktop quite happily.
I'll do some stress testing tomorrow and see if I can narrow things down a bit further.
I'm still a bit suspicious as the machine would look up on the boot drive selector (holding down option at boot). But I wonder if there's something special about the Apple CPU extension or when it loads i.e. does i impact the boot selector screen somehow...

When you say it doesn't get to the 'Happy Mac' do you mean the small classic Mac icon or the OS splash screen?

 

[Gothikon]

It did boot to the desktop. It now chimes but no happy mac.

 

[DarthNvader]

It did boot to the desktop. It now chimes but no happy mac.

Again, do you mean the little Classic Mac or the OS splash screen?

The Little Happy Mac is the Mac OS ROM file in the System Folder, it is used on New World Macs for ROM in RAM and it can be debugged.

I know you said something about the macos9lives images, those should not be used on Gig-E, they have custom versions of the Mac OS ROM made to make specific Mac's not supported by OS 9 work.

Likely what you need is a clean install of Mac OS 9 and to make sure your disk is not corrupt or failing. I don't think it's an issue with the Sonnet upgrade because OS X seems to work fine, but just because I think that, doesn't mean it is so.

First step, fully check the SMART status of the drive, next format and reinstall Mac OS 9. If the drive is fine and a fresh install of the OS doesn't do it we'll have to look deeper.

I've seen cases of bad ATA cables and drives in Master with Slave Present Mode rather than Cable Select or Master no Slave present.

Also I've had the ATA 66 bus of the Sawtooth and the Gig-E is basically the same machine, fail on me before, so it's an off chance you could have a failing bus too.

Are you booting OS X on the same bus? With the same drive?

 

[DarthNvader]

OS 9 and OS X treat drivers differently, if you have a failing PCI card or a device on the systems board it may not show up in OS X because of the different driver architectures.

Also the 1GHz clocked CPU maybe pushing a failing device to the limit, where as the lower clocked CPU doesn't push it hard enough to hang OS 9.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, let's do the simple trouble shooting steps and work our way to the more complex debugging until we find the issue.

 

[nathall]

I don’t know if this is of any help, but I have a 128GB SSD in my PowerMac 6300/120 via an adapter on the internal IDE bus also running OS 9.

If the computer is not shut down via the “Shutdown” or “Restart” command in OS 9, on the next boot the computer will hang at the same spot as yours before the happy Mac when I try to boot from the installation on the SSD. You can move the mouse but the screen stays grey forever. I can’t run OS 10.2 on a 6300, but booting from the OS 9 install CD will get me to the desktop. As long as I “Shutdown” or “Restart” from there, I can then again boot happily from the OS 9 on the SSD until the next time it crashes or I have to force a shutdown. Note that it has to be OS 9; if I boot with a 8.x Disk Tools floppy and restart, it still won’t boot from the SSD.

There are several variables in your situation that make our problems not likely to be the same, but I’m curious if yours also would boot properly to OS 9 as long as the last shutdown/restart from OS 9 was a clean one and not a crash or forced restart.

 

[Gothikon]

@DarthNvader when I've been referring to the happy mac I've meant the little classic mac, before the Mac OS splash screen.

So to be clear the two times it fails most often when starting Mac OS 9 are either

1. _before_ the little classic Mac, or
2. Somewhere between a few seconds and a few minutes after getting to the desktop i.e. it rarely files whilst loading extensions.
   
   Observations from today:

• I turned the machine on to see what would happen and it got stuck at the grey screen before the little classic mac icon
  I reset the PRAM, rebooted, same problem
• I connected the external FW drive back up, hoping it would see the OS X partition. However it booted straight in to OS 9 from the internal SSD!
• It then crashed, rebooted it was fine, loaded up Quake 3 to stress it and it crashed a couple of minutes later.

During this time I found a couple of things:

1. I looked at Apple system profiler and it said low power mode disabled because of a card in slot C, I had forgotten about a SCSI card. so i've removed this but it seems to have no effect
2. I opened up the machine to disconnect the internal SSD with OS 9 on it and I noticed the CPU heatsink was warm, not hot but definitely warmer than I'd expect given how little time it had been on.

I have now booted in to OS X, it's been running for 15 minutes and the CPU heatsink is only slightly warm after running for 20 minutes.

Next steps:

• FW Drive Remove Mac OS 9 lives install (it will only have OS 10.2 and 2 other partitions for data and apps)
• Reinstalling OS 9, the sonnet CPU extension and ATI drivers on the internal SSD

Main focus right now is trying different versions of OS 9. I've always treated them as consistent enough and assumed if it works with one version of OS 9 it'll work with another or vice versa but it seems like that might not be the case.

 

[chriscarruthers]

I've used the late "MDD" version of 9.2.2 with great success on all towers from B&W through MDD 2003 and boots all of them (except FW800 of course), including a Gigabit with a 1.6 GHz Sonnet Encore/ST (Sonnet drivers and updated CPU file installed via Classic first):

• https://macintoshgarden.org/apps/mac-os-922-powermac-g4-mdd

Just copy the system and apps folders over under Mac OS X and boom, Classic and boot ready to go. Only annoying thing is the Mac OS 9 first run setup UI and missing menu bar when booting the very first time, but that's not unique to this version of the files and is a one time thing only!

I've always been running Tiger 10.4.11 alongside it for what it's worth (10.4.6 installed and then updates applied).

 

[Gothikon]

Making a little progress:
- I've wiped the internal SSD
- I've removed OS 9 lives version of OS 9 from the FW Drive
- I now have the 9.2.2 ISO but don't have a blank disc to burn it to. When i copied the system folder on to the internal SSD
1. the boot drive selector worked, this is a first since installing the CPU upgrade
2. I got an error because the system folder from the 9.2.2 uni ISO expects to be on locked media

I seem to remember restoring an ISO to an HDD once but can't remember how I did it, googling...

@chriscarruthers I'll give your suggestion a shot.
Slowly seem to be zeroing in on it being an issue related to specific versions of OS 9.2. I actually can't remember where I got the copy of 9.2 that was on the internal SSD when this troubleshooting began...

 

[DarthNvader]

Making a little progress:
- I've wiped the internal SSD
- I've removed OS 9 lives version of OS 9 from the FW Drive
- I now have the 9.2.2 ISO but don't have a blank disc to burn it to. When i copied the system folder on to the internal SSD
1. the boot drive selector worked, this is a first since installing the CPU upgrade
2. I got an error because the system folder from the 9.2.2 uni ISO expects to be on locked media

I seem to remember restoring an ISO to an HDD once but can't remember how I did it, googling...

@chriscarruthers I'll give your suggestion a shot.
Slowly seem to be zeroing in on it being an issue related to specific versions of OS 9.2. I actually can't remember where I got the copy of 9.2 that was on the internal SSD when this troubleshooting began...

Make sure the boot partition for OS 9 is not over 128GB in size.

 

[Gothikon]

@DarthNvader yep, the FW drive is only 60GB and partitioned as ~30, 15, 15
Anyway, all the rebooting and crashing must have been bad for FW drive with partitions being corrupted so got I got a bit side tracked trying to recover and back things up from them Once I've finished backing up the few useful files I'll wipe it and repartition it.

There are a few too many variables right now. My current objective is getting a complete clean install of 9.2.2 from the Uni installer on either the internal SSD _or_ a partition on the FW drive.

I'm, hoping I can do this by restoring the ISO to a partition on the FW drive using my MacBook Pro then booting from the partition and installing directly to the Sawtooths SSD.

Alternatively I'll try and mount it in OS 9 on my iMac G3 or MDD and install directly to the FW drive. I don't trust running the installed from Classic mode.

Life would be a lot easier if I had a blank disc I could burn the universal 9.2.2 installer on to! Right now there are a few too many variables trying to do something simple.

I think all I've really confirmed in the last day or so is certain versions of OS 9 seem to cause the Sawtooth to lock up on the startup disk selection screen (holding down the option key when you boot). The versions of 9.2.2 from the Uni installed or the eMac and MDD do not seem to cause this problem but whatever version of OS 9 I had on the internal SSD before (and possibly the Mac OS 9 Lives installer) did.