PowerBook G3 PDQ System Error on Boot

[gocarlo]

Hey Gang--

Having some issues with my PDQ. The system refuses to boot. The farthest I've been able to get is the "Welcome to Mac OS" screen with my Mac OS 8.5 retail CD. Before it can display the progress bar, I get The Bomb with a system error occurred message: illegal instruction To temporarily turn off extensions, restart and hold down the shift key. I've tried this, but I get the same exact error message. (photo of error attached)

I have nothing plugged into the PowerBook except for power and the CD-ROM drive in the CD bay. Its hard drive is empty (or at least, non-bootable). I've tried resetting the PRAM (4x startup chimes) and the PMU. Does anyone have any idea what could be causing this? My initial suspicion is that perhaps it needs a new PRAM battery.

Appreciate any help, thank you.

 

[gocarlo]

Just for the sake of seeing what would happen, I took a hard drive I had laying around with OS 9 / X installed on it and put it in the PDQ. It begins starting up, gets to the but doesn't go any further than that. Same thing happens when I try booting off of an OS 9 CD.

 

[beachycove]

I have had four or five Wallstreets pass through here, all with dead backup batteries and none with these symptoms. So I'm inclined to doubt that the backup battery is to blame.

Wallstreets do commonly have problems with the charge card (little card that sits under the trackpad), and one suspects that this is caused by poor quality capacitors. Were bad capacitors routinely installed on Wallstreet logic boards in general? You might try disassembly and cleaning/ inspection/ reconnecting everything. It's about an hour's work to strip down and then to reassemble a Wallstreet, so that and the cleaning would probably kill a good part of an afternoon. You'd need to strip it down, more or less, to install the backup battery, so why not do the whole thing?

 

[gocarlo]

I have had four or five Wallstreets pass through here, all with dead backup batteries and none with these symptoms. So I'm inclined to doubt that the backup battery is to blame.
Wallstreets do commonly have problems with the charge card (little card that sits under the trackpad), and one suspects that this is caused by poor quality capacitors. Were bad capacitors routinely installed on Wallstreet logic boards in general? You might try disassembly and cleaning/ inspection/ reconnecting everything. It's about an hour's work to strip down and then to reassemble a Wallstreet, so that and the cleaning would probably kill a good part of an afternoon. You'd need to strip it down, more or less, to install the backup battery, so why not do the whole thing?

Thank you, this is very helpful. I think I'll give that a shot. Good old alcohol on a cotton q-tip for cleaning the contacts?

 

[beachycove]

Yes.

It occurs to me too that reseating ram and processor before more major surgery would be a good first move.