TAM hangs after a few startups

[eweri]

Hello!

I have a TAM with a strange problem: It works perfectly, boots up as expected everything is fine but only for about 6-15 reboots. After that the TAM got hung in the boot process with the little colored mac (no extension loaded at that point)

I can boot with the CD or external SCSI drive but not with the internal ATA-Drive. I tried with disk first aid, Norton Disk Doctor and every other thing but nothing solved the problem. The only solution i found was to copy the internal disk to an external disk - initialize the internal hd and copy everything back to the internal hd.

This lasts for around 6 to 15 reboots until it starts again. I also tried to renew the driver partition but this did no help either.

So what is wrong with this TAM? It does not have the original drive anymore - it was damaged - I had to replace it with a newer one.

BTW. I am looking for an ethernet-card for the comm-II-slot.

Bye,

eweri

 

[applefreak]

system version?

 

[Trash80toHP_Mini]

DiskWarrior rulz. Sounds like time for re-formatting if not.

 

[uniserver]

take the rear off

Pop out your ram, Pop out your Cache, Pop out your Rom.

then blast the whole thing out with your air compressor.

get all that dust outta there.

If that doesn't help

then maybe there is some corruption in your hard drive, as trash80 said.

 

[Byrd]

When you say 6 - 15 reboots, is that in a matter of minutes or over an extended period of time - or after turning it on and off all of a sudden it starts to flake out over say a few days?

Easiest troubleshooting will be to put in another 2.5" HD. In addition, remove the CPU heatsink, clean off the dry chalky crud and re-apply thermal paste, overheating could be a factor too. Clean the umbilical cord connector (the large round screw-in one) with electrical contact cleaning solvent.

JB

 

[eweri]

Okay i try to be as exact as possible:

1. @applefreak: System does not matter - happens with 8.6 and 9.2.2 (I do not have the original install media )

2. @Trash80toHP_mini: As I mention in my post I can only recover from this error by reformating (initializing) the hd

3. @Byrd: It does not matter how much time it takes between startups, for example I shutdown the TAM in the evening when I come back in the morning I switch it on it hangs at startup. Or sometimes when I am playing around with the TAM I reboot it and all of a sudden it got hung in the boot screen - but only after a few successful startups. When this happens I can only get back to a working state by reformating the disk and copy the system back to the disk. Until this error happens again.

I am going to look inside I see if it is very dusty.

Any idea? How about bad ram? I have no other ram to test it.

Bye,

eweri

P.S. I read somewhere that Steve Wozniak stated that the TAM has a ROM bug that leads to trouble when a disk bigger than 2GB is installed.

 

[uniserver]

yeah partition your drive for less then 2gb.

maybe thats it?

 

[Byrd]

From what you have described, sounds like a hard disk with bad blocks that only works "for a while" before needing a reformat. Try another 2.5" drive. I've not had any problems with 2GB+ drive partitions on my TAM, having had 40/60/and soon 100GB 2.5" drives installed with a single partition. I'm fairly sure it was the other way around with Woz's TAM - he was using a large HD without issues as well.

 

[eweri]

Okay....

Well last week I started my TAM and got a strange noise from the disk and it does not boot. So I thought the disk is gone, Byrd was right.

I throw the old disk away and put another 10GB disk into the TAM. I setup two partitions, the first one was about 1GB and it is for the system, the second one is for data.

After I setup everything I copied the system from an external disk to the first partition and rebooted. The TAM booted and everything looks fine ... until yesterday. 8-o

Yesterday I switch it on and .... got to the little Macintosh thats all. Same error as before

So this was not a disk problem. Any other ideas? Caps?

There is not a lot of dust in the TAM.

Bye,

eweri

P.S. Is there a memtest app for Mac OS 7,8,9 like X?

 

[Byrd]

Hi eweri,

for how long was the "new" 10GB HD good for - days, weeks? To be honest, I'd try another HD - a 10GB 2.5" drive would be over a decade old, the older they get the more flaky they become. While on medical leave I recently fixed up about sixty generic PC laptops with 2.5" IDE drives (early 2000 - late 2000 era), and about half had dead hard disks ranging from 6 - 80GB. I'd also check the IDE ribbon cable for the 2.5" HD looks OK with no damage.

Look out for a nice modern drive - I'm currently sporting a 7200RPM Seagate 100GB in mine. Put it in before Christmas and it's been fine, enough to have all my MP3s at once!

You can check RAM using TechTool PRO under OS 8/9

Good luck!

JB

 

[eweri]

Hi Byrd!

It last for two or three days. Than I opened the TAM and used compressed air do remove any dust, I clean the contacts of the Cache module and the RAM module with alcohol. When I put back everything and tried to restart, the TAM makes the startup sound and thats all the display stays dark, no sound from the disk that the TAM is booting (connected an external SCSI hard drive).

Had no time to look any further ...

Bye,

eweri

 

[jsarchibald]

I bought a TAM that was 'not working', but I was able to get it started with nothing on the screen. I replaced the PRAM battery with another one, and the screen came on and the machine worked. However, I still have an Address Bus Error after it loads the extensions and is about to go to the desktop. I think I might try to fix that sometime this week if I can...

 

[eweri]

The TAM works again - just got a few minutes and I removed the Cache module and it started immediately from the internal disk that I thought was defective.

Maybe all the problems this machine had in the last years was just a broken Cache module?

I´ll see - for testing I do not put it back into the machine.

Bye,

eweri

P.S. I put the module back in and the same problem - looks that this is definitely a damaged cache module - maybe this module was bogus from day one, because I got this TAM from a customer who told me that this machine NEVER worked well, crushed often and so the TAM was not handled carefully. When I found it, it was in a real bad state. But it is still a real cool device. Now i am going to install OS 9

 

[Byrd]

Hope that fixes it up eweri, now a good reason to look out for a L2 G3 in it's place, or a replacement 256K/512K/1MB cache module from a 6500 machine.

 

[eweri]

Okay - where can I get one Sonnet G3 Cache Module? Or a 512kB Cache Module?

 

[Byrd]

Just set up a search on eBay with "sonnet l2 g3" or "6500 cache" with email notification