Quadra 700 double boots

[John8520]

My 700 has a rather bizarre... "problem." When I cold boot it (boot it from a totally shutdown state) it chimes, tests the RAM, gets to the happy mac, blanks screen, chimes, happy mac, and then it boots. The RAM isn't tested after the 2nd chime either, it goes straight to the happy mac. It used to only do this when I tried to boot off my 7.6.1 CD. It would spin up the CD, and get the the Mac OS bootsplash and start loading, then reboot and eject the CD. If I got the CD in fast enough it would boot happily the 2nd time around.

Just for giggles I took a (phone quality nonetheless) video of it - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb-JKOSv7gk

Any ideas why this is happening? Is something wrong?

 

[Temetka]

I don't know what your problem is.

I had a Q700 back in the day. It was an awesome machine. Once in a while it would do the double-boot thing. Not too often though.

 

[QuadSix50]

My Quadra 650 does that as well from time to time. I wonder if it has anything to do with the video adapter and the Mac adjusting to the settings on it. Mine has the DIP switches on it.

 

[John8520]

Which video adapter? My Mac-VGA cable or the video card? I use the onboard video for output, so there aren't any dip switches. I'll try booting it without the mac-vga cable attached right now.

Annnnd...

That seems to have been it, if I start it with the mac-vga cable not attached it boots once, and loads the os (I can tell by the HDD grinding.) However, if I connect the cable after it's booted there's no video. : Nice to know what it was, though.

 

[Bolle]

my mystic does the same thing... but it only does it, when you completely cold boot it. when you only soft-power-down it (lulz) it boots normally. I dont have got a battery in there and I think thats the problem in this case. you may also want to check your quadras battery.

 

[John8520]

Yeah, my Quadra also lacks a PRAM battery. I think I might have one on my iMac's motherboard, I'll go check now and see if it has any voltage.

 

[SiliconValleyPirate]

It's a sign of a dead or missing PRAM battery. 7.6 or higher Mac OS has to set some flags in the PRAM on boot that are not the default on a lot of older 68k Macs. If they are not set, it sets them them does a second boot cycle to load itself up with them set.

 

[Scott Baret]

The IIcx, IIci, and Q700 all shared a common power supply. My IIci double booted once and I've seen even freakier things in a IIcx (it wouldn't boot but after I had it plugged in for a few hours it suddenly just came on all by itself--I didn't push any power keys).

I've heard the Astec supplies in there are flaky. Try to find one with a GE, they are supposedly better.

Astec's supplies in Mac SEs were also said to be the lesser of the two. I've seen many more SEs with the Sony supply but the few I have run into with the Astec have a higher frequency of problems. (SEs are easy to tell--Astecs have white switches, Sonies have black....but this is not the case on IIcx/IIci/Q700s).