Undocumented System Error

[vacputer]

Bottom line up front: Does anyone know what a negative 2000 series error in OS 9 is supposed to indicate?
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I just ran into an odd symptom while troubleshooting what I'm pretty sure is a bad SATA cable in my G4 (I shouldn't have expected a short-tipped straight cable to survive a 90º bend for long without strain relief). With the boot drive connected through the bad cable it'd start up just fine in OS X but OS 9 would bomb, indicating "System Error -2817" immediately after loading extensions. This would happen consistently even when booting from CD. I checked Apple's KB articles enumerating the various error numbers and there doesn't appear to be a negative 2000 series listed anywhere.

I have a new (correctly left-angled) cable on order so it shouldn't be a problem going forward, but I'm curious about the error. Does anyone have any information on what -2000 errors are intended to indicate, or why OS 9 would promptly halt over a (seemingly relatively unproblematic) disk error while OS X gave no indication at all of a problem, either up-front or in the system log?

 

[Nixontheknight]

Bottom line up front: Does anyone know what a negative 2000 series error in OS 9 is supposed to indicate?
--

I just ran into an odd symptom while troubleshooting what I'm pretty sure is a bad SATA cable in my G4 (I shouldn't have expected a short-tipped straight cable to survive a 90º bend for long without strain relief). With the boot drive connected through the bad cable it'd start up just fine in OS X but OS 9 would bomb, indicating "System Error -2817" immediately after loading extensions. This would happen consistently even when booting from CD. I checked Apple's KB articles enumerating the various error numbers and there doesn't appear to be a negative 2000 series listed anywhere.

I have a new (correctly left-angled) cable on order so it shouldn't be a problem going forward, but I'm curious about the error. Does anyone have any information on what -2000 errors are intended to indicate, or why OS 9 would promptly halt over a (seemingly relatively unproblematic) disk error while OS X gave no indication at all of a problem, either up-front or in the system log?

I believe -2817 might be an unimplemented error caused by corruption when Mac OS 9 is loaded through the bad SATA cable, but keep us updated if the error persists when you switch SATA cables

 

[vacputer]

I believe -2817 might be an unimplemented error caused by corruption when Mac OS 9 is loaded through the bad SATA cable, but keep us updated if the error persists when you switch SATA cables

The thing that's got me a bit stuck is that it throws the same error when it's booted off of a CD on the built-in (P)ATA interface. I've run the machine with the side open to allow a standard-height straight SATA cable to fit and everything works fine. I wouldn't think twice about it if I were booting off of a known-faulty disk.

 

[vacputer]

Obligatory xkcd:

I've had a very educational last few hours. This is the first time I've ever derived any noteworthy benefit from my copy of Inside Macintosh: PowerPC System Software, so that's a perk I guess. I'm not especially keen on going down the rabbit hole of nailing down exactly what happened, but here's some modestly-informed speculation:

-2817 is a result code for the GetDiskFragment Toolbox routine indicating that the system could not connect to the requested code fragment. Given the timing, I'd hazard a wild guess that right at the end of the startup process when the Finder is launched, the SCSI Manager is attempting to load the device drivers off the disk and encountering a read error mid-way through doing so. It seems reasonable to assume that there isn't a suitable error handler for this eventuality given that it just bombs the system.

If anyone with better knowledge of the ROM than I can glean from my System 7-era copies of IM wants to weigh in on this, it'd be appreciated. I'm far from experienced with the Toolbox and I'm sure I've gotten parts of this wrong.

 

[cheesestraws]

Could it be a corrupted/broken driver? Can you replace the driver (perhaps using OS X, if the machine boots into that fine?)

 

[vacputer]

Could it be a corrupted/broken driver? Can you replace the driver (perhaps using OS X, if the machine boots into that fine?)

Fortunately, this is just an academic exercise at this point. The actual root cause of the problem was a bad SATA cable that has since been replaced, I just found the way the software handled it interesting.

 

[mikes-macs]

You may receive the following error when attempting to update or reinstall Verbum Bible Software: "Verbum Bible Software has detected a problem with your system configuration." -2817