5300c is Sad

[raoulduke]

Anything I can do?

Was trying to format a CF card in a PCMCIA adapter [that read on my 3400; it's not Cardbus].  First time I inserted it, the machine either froze or restarted.  When it restarted, there were white and colored bars across the screen.  I shut it off and booted it normally.  When I inserted the PC card again the machine froze.  Then I ejected the card and restarted.  The bars popped up again and it promptly restarted to the Sad Mac - and chimes of death.

 

[raoulduke]

Weirdly appears to just be hard drive failure. It's my first sad mac. Sorry for the false alarm [or maybe not, I don't know].

The HD failure is possibly coupled with the 5300 having a PC card issue or an issue with this specific card.

 

[Elfen]

The 5300c has a RAM Card in it? Open her up and press down on the cards to make sure they are properly seated. Then check your cabling.

What OS is on the Card and on the HD and what are their relative sizes? I think there is something here than meets the eye.

 

[raoulduke]

There is a RAM card.  But it's only when the Card's inserted that it freezes.  Could some weird PCMCIA issue have screwed up the IDE bus?  [After the first Sad Mac, I subsequently formatted the Card, wrote to it, booted from it, and then it froze and went back to Sad Mac.]

There was an (I think) 8.5 Disk Tools [floppy] System Folder on the PC card (16gb = 14.4 or so, I think) and 8.6 on the HD (which is I think 2.0gb).  I'll open it up tonight or tomorrow and check the RAM card and replace the HD as a test.

[http://www.amazon.com/Digigear-PCMCIA-adapter-supports-memory/dp/B00MFVG9XO/ - This is the culprit.  It was sent to me by the manufacturer as a PCMCIA replacement for a Cardbus adapter.  Now that I read the description... is it possible this isn't fully PCMCIA compliant?  The other adapter, which I'm returning and which is Cardbus, did read on the 5300, although it wouldn't work properly.]

 

[Bunsen]

[that read on my 3400; it's not Cardbus]

The 3400 is Cardbus compliant:  it usually requires a one-wire mod to activate it, but someone may have already done that on your machine.  In any case, the fact that your adapter reads okay on a 3400 doesn't prove 100% that it's not Cardbus.

If you can find an adapter that you know for absolute certain is 16 bit PCMCIA and not 32 bit Cardbus, I would suggest installing it with a blank CF in the 5300 and formatting / installing the OS on it there.

Your other option - seeing as you're opening the thing up to check out the HD anyway - is to put a 2.5" IDE to CF adapter in and have your CF hard drive substitute internal, leaving your PCMCIA slots for other things.

 

[Bunsen]

it's only when the Card's inserted that it freezes.

So it's back to booting okay now, without the card?

Could some weird PCMCIA issue have screwed up the IDE bus?

Pretty doubtful. I don't think those two buses are connected in any way. The only thing I can think of is a plain old electrical short in the PCMCIA slot has scrambled your PRAM or something. Do you have an external SCSI drive or CD you could test-boot from?

Try doing a PRAM reset, aka power manager reset.

http://www.amazon.com/Digigear-PCMCIA-adapter-supports-memory/dp/B00MFVG9XO/- This is the culprit.

Uh, yeah. There's your problem, as they say ...

Output Interface 32-bit CardBus Type II PC Card

Cardbus cards are not backwards compatible with PCMCIA slots.  You want an absolutely definitely 16 bit only PCMCIA card.

NB, you won't have any of these issues with a 2.5" IDE/ATA-CF adapter.

... provided you can get the thing to boot at all now, obs.

 

[Bunsen]

Also, why the Disk Tools floppy?  Not that that is your problem now, but why not a fresh install of a full system? 

NB that when you're installing a system from another machine, you need to choose the option in the installer to "Install software for any mac"

It's also important that your CF card can do UDMA - ie, can act as a hard drive to the system.  The card manufacturer's specs should tell you.

 

[raoulduke]

Thanks.

*)  Yes, it's back to booting for the most part.  Crashes with the card almost like clockwork > Sad Mac.

1)  Cardbus:  Yea I worded a lot of that unhelpfully I'm guessing.  The adapter is supposed to be PCMCIA compliant (it says it's 16bit compliant but it also says it's 32bit compliant.  Now I'm wondering if there's a voltage issue.  But I also noted it read on the 5300 a few times - so maybe it is 16bit compliant and has a voltage issue... not great.  But I won't be using it on the 5300.

2)  As for the HD, I don't hear anything - when I have time later I'll swap it out, but either the HD is dead or... worse.  But it may just be purely coincidental, with the HD failing just at that time.  I'm not the original owner and it had the original HD in.  I got it two months ago or so.

3)  I don't know why I didn't think of resetting the PRAM.  However, it just seems to shut down when I try.  I'll replace the [dead] battery later and take a look inside and then try again.

Well interestingly this card does work well on the 3400.  It seems to support UDMA.  It just clearly cannot be used as PCMCIA unless the PC Card setup is also Cardbus compliant [that's kind of mincing words...].  But I'll also look up IDE/ATA > CF adapters.  I didn't know those specifically existed.

[4)  When I formatted it on the 5300 [because there's something really screwed on the 3400's board - actually I'll PM you on that because you may have some useful thoughts] the only medium I had connected was the floppy module and the disk I had in it happened to be the Disk Tools floppy you can make with 8.5 (which I was trying to install via the 3400).]  I just wanted to test booting and I was curious whether any different symptoms would present on the 3400.

 

[Bunsen]

The adapter is supposed to be PCMCIA compliant (it says it's 16bit compliant but it also says it's 32bit compliant.

Not exactly. My reading of this:

Compliant with 16/32-bit(CardBus) Type II PC Card interface (JEIDA 4.2)

is that the card is compatible with a 16/32 bit slot, but not a 16 bit slot.

ie, Cardbus 32 bit slots are required to be backwards compatible with PC Card / PCMCIA 16 bit cards, so the slot can reasonably be described as a 16/32 bit slot, but that doesn't necessarily mean the card is 16 bit.

Make sense?

Well interestingly this card does work well on the 3400.  It seems to support UDMA.  It just clearly cannot be used as PCMCIA

UDMA is a function of the CF card.  The adapter is just a straight-through pin to pin adapter, with no logic.

At this stage I would suggest booting from an external SCSI device and checking out what all is in fact good on that 5300.

 

[raoulduke]

I wasn't too clear, but I was sort of inferring the same thing.  I think the compliance issue goes beyond Cardbus, though - since it hasn't worked properly on either the 3400 or Kanga either.  I also read there's a potential grounding-wire issue (which could speak specifically to the electrical issues).  I haven't had time yet but i will boot the 5300 off an external and check it out.  I've only been able to reset the PRAM once from among dozens of tries.  It's possible attempting to use the bootlegged battery was affecting that, though.

 

[raoulduke]

I've been talking to the company that sold me the adapter.  They suggested I try a smaller memory card.  Is 16gb too much for OS 9?  If there's a maximum I would imagine it's way more than that [just of storage in general I mean not specifically of flash cards].  Any thoughts?

I actually also remember seeing (I forget in what context - it may have been SD > CF adapters) 2gb and under limits noted.  Is it possible this adapter simply won't work with over 2gb of memory?  Is that an obvious principle that I have just missed...?

 

[Macdrone]

You should be able to petition it into 2gb partitions. If that's not going to work a smaller card should, although you may need a third party formatting software either way.

 

[Elfen]

Raoulduke, you misread my post. In "RAM Card in the 5300", is there added RAM in the system, if so, is that card loose? It is not the CF FlashRAM card or PCMCIA slot. Only way to tell is to unscrew the keyboard, lift up the keyboard and look at the upper left area where the PCMCIA Slots are. That is where RAM Expansion goes into the 5300 on a special card that goes into a slot below the PCMCIA cage. If the RAM expansion card is loose, you can press it back in until you hear a soft snap or a pop.

Now, lets dissect the rest of the posts. Bunsen has it right. So excuse me for back tracking an repeating questions.

With nothing - does the 5300 boots on its own? Does the 3400 boot up on its own? What system is in the 5300? What system is on the 3400? By 3400 I'm including the Kanga as well.

With the 5300, you want a minimum of 2GBs, a max of 4 or 8 GBs but it needs to be partitioned into 2GB Slices. System 7 will only work on 2GB Slices, OS8 using HFS+ can handle 4GB Slices. But you can not partition on OS8 or OS9 and partition it, even in 2GB Slices, it is in HFS+ and not HSF. You need to partition it in System 7. Then you can Format it. If you are partitioning in OS8 or OS9 and then formatting it in System 7, you just confused the system and it crashed.

Norton should be able to fix this if your System 7 is corrupt on the 5300.

When you get the 5300 running, put the CF into a PCMCIA Adapter and put it in the slot. Run HD Set Up or a third party partition software. I recommend Sliverlining but that is my pet peeve.

1) remove all partitions on the CF Card.

2) set up 2GB partitions on the card.

3) format each partition.

4) the drive icons for each partition should come up after the formatting is done. Eject the card.

5) reboot system without the cards.

6) Put in cf card back in the PCMCIA Slot. The drive icons should come up.

Now to test the CF as a bootable card.

1)Drag the system folder into one of the two cf icons, preferably the first one.

2) Open the copied system folder to see if it copied and to bless it.

3) Control Panel -> Start Up Disk - select the drive icon with the system to start up from.

4) Reboot the 5300. The card may or may not pop out.

- if it does pop out, put it back in.

- it if does not pop out, don worry about it.

It will take a while for the 5300 to search the drive and then the PCMCIA Slot to see who has the bootable system. Once the smiley Mac comes up, it will boot from the CF Card from here on - whether it is in the PCMCIA Slot or in the IDE Slot.

 

[Elfen]

For a 5300 or any NON-OSX System 8GB is more than enough. Anything more is just a waste unless you want OSX on a G3 and 16GB would be a minimum for that.

 

[raoulduke]

I didn't address your post properly. I apologize. There were RAM cards in the 5300/3400/Kanga. I had reseated the one in the 5300 after the problem and before posting, so I didn't think that was it, but maybe I should be very certain of that when going through it again. As for HFS/+, at this point I'm really only dealing with 8.6 (5300c) and 9 (probably 9.0.4 or something; Kanga) - so I'm probably going to leave everything in HFS+.

I more or less relayed (to Shopdigi or whatever they're called) Bunsen's thoughts - that the card really isn't fully 16-bit compatible. The thing is that they sent this very specifically as a replacement because the Cardbus card I bought from them was totally incompatible. When I explained that their card didn't appear to actually be fully 16-bit compatible, then they brought up the size of the SD card. That's why I asked - not partition issues but whether there might be a size incompatibility. I don't want to dwell on that because that was largely to refute what I thought to be a capricious defense. [it's funny because I was very specific - they knew this was for a Powerbook 5300c from 1995 lol.]

Ugh. So next weekend (Elfen), I will very carefully and methodically test out your process on the 5300c. As I have mentioned; the card did boot the 3400 (I think) and 5300 - but only one on the 5300. Every other time I try to start with the CF in the 5300 it just goes to Sad Mac; and every time I insert it after boot on either 3400/Kanga/5300 it freezes (and on the 5300 then restarts to Sad Mac).

I guess what I didn't convey well here is that maybe if I preempt it on boot I can format it (that's been the issue with booting with it in), but if it freezes on insert... do I really want to risk using this card if I can avoid it?

[And Bunsen I'll have to look at my 3400 board in relation to a wire mod. For some things it should (anyway?) work without. I'm assuming the Kanga doesn't have these issues, but it may also not be fully compliant [in which case it would definitely be partially compliant like many 3400s (some 3400s are not compliant at all as I understand what little I've read)].

(I was using 16gb because that's all I had. I now have 128mb also. But yeah I do intend to use Classilla and I'm probably stuck with 96mb. I want to test out Tiger with XPostFacto also. )

 

[raoulduke]

(http://lowendmac.com/2014/low-end-macs-compleat-guide-to-the-kanga-powerbook-g3/ - The Kanga's lack of a ground plane was what I was thinking of)

 

[Elfen]

OK, I see how it is.

That second card... It's a 16GB? Since it crashes, something is wrong with the partition and formatting. The one that does boot (I'm assuming it too is a CF), you can put into a CF to IDE Adapter into the 5300 and it will boot it from the IDE. You will need a single CF to IDE Adapter as Dual CF to IDE do not work on Macs at all. See from the "Booting From CF Thread":

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/23406-booting-from-a-compact-flash-drive/&do=findComment&comment=243936

When the 5300 boots from the CF in the IDE, you can put in that faulty CF into the PCMCIA and repartition it and reformat it from there.

Those CF to IDE adapters you can get from ebay for a couple dollars - no more than $5 with free shipping. And only the Single CF Adapters will work on a Mac, the Dual CF Adapters wont. The Dual CF Adapters will work on a PC however... The only problem with these adapters is that they literally hang around inside the machine. You can use tape and thin pieces of foam to make a case that wraps around it that makes it rest properly inside the machine.

While on ebay, you can also look into CF cards and PATA SSDs. Maybe it's seasonal but lately I have been seeing prices drop lately.

Good luck.

 

[Bunsen]

When I explained that their card didn't appear to actually be fully 16-bit compatible, then they brought up the size of the SD card.

They appear to be talking out of their hats.

 

[raoulduke]

Elfen, I was planning on going through your steps tonight or tomorrow but I have a concern - on the Kanga my PCMCIA - SD converter freezes every time I insert it (pretty similarly to the 3400c and actually also 5300c).  So I don't think I'm going to be able to get to the point of actually formatting it.  Initialization options have only come up once or twice.  It's possible it's because the computer thinks the PCMCIA card should get 5V, but the SD cards seem to all need 5V.  So I got a cardbus > CF adapter (and also a CF > SD adapter) and a CF card (they're 3.3V or 5V).  So I think I may hold off till some of that stuff gets here.