Yet another 2400c problem

[beachycove]

Installed new pram battery as I say on another thread, and these replacement cells seem to work fine, though to be honest, not having a multimeter, I haven't tested the charge properly.

While I had it apart, I also installed a 30GB Fujitsu drive. Now the drive is large and wonderfully silent, makes the thing fast, and so forth: I like it. However, the machine now will not awaken from sleep: I just get a blank screen, forcing a reboot. No GLOD, thankfully, but this is no use either. Same story on battery power or mains.

I noticed this information while a-Googling on the subject:

"A sleep problem can emerge if you install a 20GB (maybe larger) IBM HD into a Wallstreet. The problem is that the high level of magnetic force exhibited by the drive can affect the sleep mechanism on the Wallstreet, to the extent that the system won't sleep when shutting the lid (the mechanism is magnetic)."

Has anyone had analogous troubles on installation of a large drive in a 2400c? I don't WANT to take the thing apart again (10 times already?), but it seems I have to. But what to do when those 25-odd screws come out, that is the question!

 

[Franklinstein]

That's interesting. There were no jumpers on the drive, were there? Sometimes drive manufacturers or resellers will ship drives with jumpers installed, as some computers need to have the drive configured as either a 2-device master or slave (or cable select). The 2400's hard drive is on its own bus, so it's a single master (so no jumpers should be installed).

That may be causing your problem, but you'd likely also notice a fairly long delay between the initial grey screen and the happy Mac. It's unlikely to be a power issue, as most Fujitsu drives draw ~500mA, whereas the original IBM drive common in those things pulled between 500 and 1300mA. Some Toshibas, and most Hitachis, will draw well in excess of 1A.

Try booting and sleeping the computer off of a floppy or external drive; if it works, it may be a software issue. If it doesn't work, then it's likely to be hardware. If you dive back in, be sure to check other things, as well; sometimes stuff works even if it's only partially seated.

I'm using a 20GB Fujitsu MHR-series in my 2400c, and have had no problems.

Also, the WallStreet issue occurs because it uses magnetically-engaged sleep, whereas all previous machines use mechanically-engaged sleep. In WallStreets, I recommend only Fujitsu drives to replace the originals, as other brands (not limited to IBM/Hitachi) put the powerful armature magnets directly beneath the magnetic sleep switch on a WallStreet, which often screws with sleep (typically putting it into terminal sleep as soon as the machine finishes booting). This happened to mine when I tried to install a 16GB Toshiba drive, but the problem disappeared when I installed its current 20GB Fujitsu MHN-series drive.

 

[beachycove]

I am planning in the next few days to upgrade from 8.5.1 to 8.6 to see if that makes any difference. If it does not, I will most likely try a 4GB CF drive that I currently have in a 2300c (silence is golden).

Mind you, having to strip the thing down even to try a new drive is a major operation.

 

[beachycove]

That's interesting. There were no jumpers on the drive, were there? Sometimes drive manufacturers or resellers will ship drives with jumpers installed, as some computers need to have the drive configured as either a 2-device master or slave (or cable select). The 2400's hard drive is on its own bus, so it's a single master (so no jumpers should be installed).

I decided in the end to get a new cf card (8GB) and a new cf-ide adapter to try to solve this one, as the software upgrade solved nothing. It transpires that the cf-ide adapter I have sourced has a master/slave select jumper (standard 1+2/ 2+3 pins).

From what was stated above, I probably should just remove the jumper altogether, right?

 

[beachycove]

I see that this thread has been inspiring....

In the interests of completeness, however, I will report finally that I simply could not get the internal CF drive of which I wrote above to work in the 2400c. The CF drive was recognized sporadically, and was formatted with Silverlining as well as with HD Setup on at least two occasions, but it seems that the 2400c lived up to its reputation as fussy here too, in that it just did not want one of these alien things in its innards. I did manage a partial system install several times, but it aborted on each occasion mid-way through, telling me that there was a problem with the drive.

Thus, to begin at the beginning again, a 2400c with fresh, definitely charged backup cells and a working main battery exhibited the following characteristics: 1) an ATA-100 Fujitsu 30GB drive mostly worked (known scsi target mode incompatibility with large drives in the 2400c excepted), but there was a serious failing in that the machine would not awaken from sleep with this ATA-100 drive installed; 2) an IDE-CF with 8GB CF card set first as Master and then with no jumpers at all would not work in the 2400c. Master setting worked occasionally; with no jumper it did not work at all. I did not try Slave, having run out of patience. The internal IDE-CF adapter, one of the cheapies from China that are all over eBay may have been the problem, of course, but the one I used is supposed to be ATA-33 compatible, and I have one like it that works just fine in a PowerBook Duo 2300c.

Ho hum. So last evening I installed an old 3GB conventional hard drive (Fujitsu) in the 2400c. As a result, the 2400c works perfectly again and wakes from sleep as it should. I took this step on arrival of a PCMCIA CF adapter that I had bought for a small sum, and I now have MacOS 8.6 installed both on the internal hard drive and on the CF card. The PCMCIA-CF combo works just as it should. Use of the latter as needed will, I hope, result in energy savings when using the main battery, and will allow me to swap files easily between the 2400c and a Pismo.

Subjectively, the PCMCIA CF drive in the 2400c seems a little slower than the conventional drives, but only a very little. Generally speaking, the machine seems satisfyingly snappy when running from CF.

This was quite an ordeal, as it is not a trivial matter to install, test and troubleshoot a hard drive something like 10 times repeatedly on a 2400c. They are quite a pain to service in this way, as the task requires very nearly complete disassembly, and there are a great many screws to contend with. This problem was accentuated by having needed earlier to disassemble the machine in order to install a new backup battery, a process which I have reported on in another thread — the cells needed are easily acquired, easily soldered, and are cheap.

However, following my pains I have success, in that I finally have my 2400c, which I rescued from a 'dead' state, in tip-top working condition.

 

[freudling]

beachycove:

Giving up so soon? I have installed a CF Card in a 5300ce and a 1400c with the addonics CF-ATA adapter and after 6 months of use on each, no problems.

Now, I know these aren't the infamously fussy 2400c, which itself, is almost as fussy as the PowerBook Wallstreet, but perhaps you should check out my install guide for the 5300 here:

http://www.thisoldmac.ca/wordpress/2008/09/13/late-night-powerbook-5300ce-flash-hard-drive/

Note the following:

You should install the Mac OS before you install the adapter with card into your 2400c, not try to install the Mac OS when it is in your computer. How did I install to the CF Card? I used a 1400c with a CD ROM drive and just installed MAC OS 8.6 from the CD to the CF Card that was sitting in the PC Card slot courtesy of a CF-PC Card adapter. Of course, the CF Card mounts on the desktop and allows you to install things to it, or copy files onto it.

BUT, I used Drive Setup in OS 8.6 that was running on my 1400c to format the CF Card to "Standard". So, I formatted, and then installed MAC OS 8.6 (generic installer) to the CF Card that was housed in the 1400c's PC Card slot via a CF-PC Card adapter. After it successfully installed, I then transplanted the CF card into the 5300ce (in this case).

But, it did not boot, so I switched the slot where the CF card was plugged in (my addonics adapter has two slots... dual). Bingo, on the next start up try it worked, and has ever since.

So, here is what I suspect:

1. Your card is not working properly because you can't install the Mac OS to it when in your 2400c (OS needs to be preinstalled like the method I detailed above)

2. You are using a dual slot CF Card adapter and your CF Card is in the wrong position

3. What the hell is Silverlining? Format your card with Apple's Drive Setup only.

Could be a combo of 1 and 2 meaning you need to change the CF Card's resting position from 1 slot to the other AND it is simply not a good idea to try and install the OS to it whilst in your computer. Use PC Card adapters for all your CF Cards and install to it that way by it being in x machine's PC Card slot and mounted on the desktop.

Also note that formatting these drives with older OSes like 7 or below, and then trying to install newer OSes like 9 could cause some problems to. I have found that for the most success, format drives and work with systems that are the same as or similar to the systems you are going to install. So, if you want OS 9 on the 2400c, format the drive and install OS 9 to it in an OS 9 environment (a PowerBook Wallstreet is handy for this).

I think if you follow my advice you will be successful... I am also about to attempt a CF Card install into a 2400c...

A third possibility:

There is really something flakey about your CF adapter, and, on that note:

Use the addonics adapter, they stand by their product and state it will work with pretty much any PowerBook.

I hope you don't give up, really... and use at least a Sandisk Extreme III card, it is an excellent card that allows for fast sequential read and writes, which basically means it is a very fast, dynamic card that is perfectly suited to a computer environment. Most other cards are garbage.

 

[beachycove]

Freudling:

The encouragement is appreciated. I did not try the tactic of formatting and software installation prior to putting the IDE-CF adapter and card in the machine. No doubt it could be made to work. However, I simply do not plan to take apart the 2400c again any time soon. The machine requires 90-120 mins. of work to disassemble and reassemble just to test a new setup, so it is much more difficult to work on than other classic powerbooks. I must have taken it apart 15 times over the past 8-10 weeks to troubleshoot and test, so many times that I began to fear doing it damage. Now that I have it working, I plan to leave it the way it is — stet.

I am, however, able to run it from CF in the pcmcia slot, now that I have purchased a pcmcia CF adapter to replace the internal one. I too like the silence and the extra 25% or so battery life that results from not using the conventional hard drive. I may also experiment with using the (8GB) CF drive to set up a massive ram disk, by mapping virtual memory to it (details over on LEM), but this is a sort of tinkering that does not involve the pains of 2400c disassembly, and that sounds good to me.

 

[freudling]

Ya, running from a PC Card slot can be a great solution... however, if your machine is not cardbus compliant, the 16 bit data path will slow everything down.

If you can, get an Extreme III or IV Sandisk card.

 

[beachycove]

I returned for most of the day to the subject of this thread, and thought I might resurrect the thread itself, having had another go at replacing the hard drive in my 2400c with a CF card.

This time it was a success. As suggested above, the problem last time (apart from the the time-consuming nature of the work on a 2400c!) was evidently the CF-IDE adapter used. This time, I replaced it with another known to work (which had been in a 2300c), and the machine booted right up from a CF card that I had already installed a system on in a PCMCIA card.

The internal adapter used was nothing fancy, just another cheap, generic piece of Chinese origin.

MacBench was run on the machine with the old conventional hard drive (a c.1998 Fujitsu 3GB MHD2032AT) before doing the swap, so when I get a chance I will run MacBench again and see what the benefit (if any) is — beyond the silence. I know that when the machine ran from the CF drive installed in a PCMCIA adapter card, the machine was perceptibly slower than when running from the conventional hard drive, so we'll see if the installation internally makes any difference.

 

[beachycove]

And the MacBench results are in:

Internal CF drive is nearly twice as fast as CF in PCMCIA adapter (cardbus enabled);

Internal CF drive is overall marginally slower than conventional HD, but dramatically faster on some operations;

603ev is marginally faster running from CF (e.g., floating point gains 4%) at same software settings.

On the whole, it seems that slightly better overall or average disk performance is possible with a conventional hard drive (even a slow one) than the CF card presently installed. This situation may, of course, be improved with a faster CF card (mine dates from c.2004). This relative loss for me is offset by about a 25% improvement in battery life, and by the fact that some tests are hugely better — which of them echoes what I mostly do on an old computer I don't know. The fact is, however, that the machine "feels" very, very snappy with the CF card internally, and so I've no regrets.

 

[coius]

Keep in mind that they test sequential. The issue with hard drives over solid state is the latency as it moves from one physical area, having to reposition the head, then wait for the data to come under the head, read it, then track to another if the sequential block doesn't contain the data it needs.

A solid-state drive on the other hand has lower latency as it doesn't have the physical impedence of having to find the track, wait for the data when it's all done in it's registers. Electrical is quicker than mechanical. ALWAYS.

That said, the SSD will excel at non-sequential and that's good. Most operations on a hard drive is non-sequential. with as much fragmentation that happens, the SSD will show very little slow down where the more files/fuller the hard drive gets, the slower it will get as it has to find places all over the platters and that can sometimes mean breaking up the files slowing down the operation to read/write.

The SSD will last fine, but on a machine that old, having better random read/write is going to be better than sequential since that will be the majority of the operations performed.

Hence one of the reasons SSDs (even slower-capped ones) on modern machines are perceptably more faster than hard drives.

I just got a newer SSD (SanDisk 120GB) SATA-II SSD for my ThinkPad (taking a second run, this time not with OCZ) and it just got crazy-insane faster than the 320GB 7200RPM, despite I know that the SSD is slower than most (It tops slower in benchmarks than the 60GB Vertex 2) but it is much faster on random I/O and it shows. Not only benchmarks better, but is significantly much faster and booting the system, launching apps and the like.

Enjoy the SSD, who cares if the HDD does faster sequential? Take out the RAM and run on most Virtual Memory and you will definitely see a difference between the HDD and the CF card.

 

[beachycove]

Well, my solid-state drive is just a bog-standard $20 CF card, so I would not expect to see such blinding results at this end. Still, some of the test results on random reads in particular could be anything from twice to about nine times faster than the conventional, spinning drive. Writes, on the other hand, were mostly marginally slower, and in one of the tests, over twice as slow.

So while it is not a curate's egg, it is not a fabulous triumph either.

It took me a long time to take the 2400c apart again after last time, and I expect it will be at least as long again before I attempt it once more. As the machine is "fast enough," it's going to run on a CF drive until it needs repair. 8 GB is drive enough for a PowerBook running Mac OS 8.6 and intended for producing text.

 

[theos911]

I bought a nice 133x Kingston CF card for my WS. 133x is faster than most of the pre-G4 portables can do. It usually maxes the bus on my WS, plus was only $30 something for a 16GB.