I've just upgraded (sidegraded?) from my faithful Blue and White 350 to a G4 350.

I gather that to all intents and purposes these are the same machine, with the only differences being the processor and the case, so I figured if I switched the RAM, hard drives, and Asante 10/100 card to the new machine, all I'd need to do would be to switch her on, and all would be as before (just a little faster maybe). The only other hardware diference I can see is that the G4 has a built-in modem, where the G3 doesn't (not that I'd use this anyway).

This seems to be the case, except when it comes to my internet connection (Telstra cable). For some reason I can't seem to get a DHCP assigned IP from the Telstra server any more. I've eliminated several possibilities... 1) my cable connection is fine, as it works as before on the 8100, 2) both the built in ethernet and the asante card seem to be working as I can get an appletalk connection to my other macs, 3) I re-installed 10.2 (archive and install) just in case there were other hardware differences that needed to be adjusted for by the OS.

When I'm plugged into the modem, the network control panel lists my IP address is 169.254.180.200 (self-assigned), instead of xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx (provided by DHCP server) as it should.

I'm stuck! Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Cheers!
CC

Air Marshall, 605 sQUADRAn

BTW, is the G4 350 AGP or PCI graphics?

It seems an IP address starting with 169.254.xxx.xxx is self-assigned by the mac when it is unable to take out a DHCP lease.

I reset the Network CP preferences, but still no joy. Also tried using DHCP with manually assigned IP (entered my static IP address), but again, no go. Pulled the Asante card... nope.

I'm going to try re-installing the OS on a separate partition to see if I can narrow the problem down further.

This ones really getting to me... but I'm going to beat it one way or another.

Foetoid... this G4 has PCI graphics.

Cheers!
CC

Air Marshall, 605 sQUADRAn

After a fresh install of 10.2 (on a new hard drive), I still get the same result. Whats more, 9.1 also does the same thing. I've tried zapping the PRAM and hitting the CUDA reset (both of them), and still get the same bloody self-assigned IP address on either ethernet interface.

The one strange thing I notice is that when booting, the machine seems to take longer than normal over the "waiting for network initialization" stage.

All I can figure is that maybe networking is mis-configured in open firmware or something on this particular machine. However I've got no idea how to even start diagnosing this.

Maybe I should just give up and get a nice Pentium with XP. gnnnnngaaaaaghhhhhh I'm going mad!

Cheers!
CC

Air Marshall, 605 sQUADRAn

Apple macintosh... it just works (we don't know why, but it does).

Back to the 68ks!

Cheers!
CC

Air Marshall, 605 sQUADRAn

If anyone has a solution for this problem, please post!

While the Mac is booting up, and initialising the network, it does not actually connect to the Telstra DHCP server coz even though it's cable, you still need to 'connect'. Therefore it does not get aaasigned a valid IP address.

This scenario *should* resolve itself once you have connected to Telstra - the IP should dynamically change as one would think. It may take a little time for the IP to be assigned (it shouldn't take too long though!)

Given the way that DHCP works, you Mac will retain the same IP address on shutdown and reboot, and only change when it logs into the DHCP server if that address has been reassigned to another machine.

DHCP servers will generally assign the same address to the same machine once the lease runs out - so long as that machine is still connected. Likewise the server will also reserve a used IP address until such time as it runs out of numbers and reassigns the IP to someone else. This is why you often have the same IP on rebooting, even with dynamic IP.

Note: most of the above is correct, but no gaurantee is implied or given for the correctness if said information.

cheers
Flash!

I can turn the AirPort software off, and watch as the "self-assigned" number goes away. I turn on the AirPort again and wait for several seconds as the Mac tries to connect to the DHCP server (again, the signal strength is near 100%). It fails and self-assigns. Meanwhile my iMac and Linux box both have hardline connections which work flawlessly through the router.

Since I share this P/B with a work LAN, it could be that there is something weird about dropping out of that network (which by the way is a hard connection) and moving to a home-based wireless LAN. But it is certainly intermittent. The long delay I get at bootup during network initialization I'm sure is an important symptom. Unfortunately this list is the only one I've found which attacks the problem directly.

The experiments continue. Thanks for your thoughts.

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