Mac Discussion

Wondering if the brain trust can nudge me in the right direction on this one.

My G4 "Sawtooth", running OS 10.3.9, will not start up. The chimes sound, the hard drive clicks for a few seconds, but the monitor (Samsung 753DF) never wakes, and the hard drive stays silent.

If I hit the reset button, I get chimes, but the hard drive doesn't even click.

If I hold down the power button to force a shutdown, then unplug the tower AND remove the battery, then reinsert the battery, it starts up fine.

I thought replacing the battery, which had been dead for years with no ill effects except when the power went out, would solve my problem. It did not.

I suspected that the fault was with the "new" ATI 9200 video card I just picked up off Craigslist. I put the old, original card in. Same problem.

For years, I've had a PCI card that provides extra Firewire/ USB 2.0 that has prevented using deep sleep. It never caused anything like this.

The last thing I have not removed and cannot rule out is the "new" Sonnet Encore 1.2 Ghz I just installed. (Same seller; I got a good deal.) Computer has been running swell; it even restarts fine. The only problem is when I shut down, and then the only solution seems to be to unplug and remove the battery.

Where would you start in trying to troubleshoot?

As always, I appreciate the help.

Have you installed the driver for the Sonnet Encore (check for it on www.macupdate)? Also, a battery replacement is a must do.



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 02/09/08 01:27AM by mnop.

Yes, I did install a new battery.

And I thought I installed all the proper drivers. But that's probably as good a place as any to start.

Since all was well until the latest change - the Sonnet CPU - that's the place to begin. Put the original CPU back in and see if the startup behavior returns to normal.

remove power cord, open case, remove battery, pram for a continuous 10 seconds while simultaneously pressing power button on front, leave alone for half hour. Re-insert battery, reconnect power cord, boot.

There used to be a list of PCI cards that had known incompatibilities with Sonnet upgrades on their site, but I can not find it now. Could be a 3-way incompatibility with the Firewire/USB card. I have also heard of some Mac models being a bit cranky wit the AGP slot empty, do not recall if that applies to your Sawtooth model. Only other thing I can think of is to verify that the G4's firmware is properly updated, but that is a long shot if it had been working in OS X already.

One other thought, has the firmware in the ROM on the Radeon 9200 been upgraded? I recalled that I had to do a ROM upgrade on a retail 9200 card I installed into a Beige G3 a few years ago.

I've now isolated the issue to the Sonnet CPU. All is well when I put the original processor in.

The G4 has the latest firmware. If I can get the Sonnet to boot up, I can update the Sonnet firmware and see if that does the trick. But since it won't boot up now, that's kind of a Catch-22.

Thanks for all the leads to follow.

Is the Sonnet upgrade a dual processor upgrade? If so, what is the uni number on your Sawtooth? Not all Sawtooth's support dual processors.

Good question -- but I'm afraid it's a single processor upgrade.

I've now successfully updated the Sonnet's firmware (I had failed to go into "program mode" by holding down the power button at startup before.) Alas, that didn't solve it.

I tried the unplug-remove battery-hold motherboard reset button down-wait 20 minutes trick. No dice.

'Tis a puzzlement.

I agree with PW that you should go to OEM setup as a last resort, but reset pram before you do.

I did try resetting the PRAM today. No luck.

But this is interesting -- I pulled the USB/Firewire PCI card to see if that was the conflict, since it has known sleep-related issues.

When I pulled the card, the monitor actually started waking up on reboot. And I can see that my problem is actually a kernel panic.

So my restated issue would be:

"With a newly installed Sonnet Encore/ST 1.2 Ghz in my Sawtooth, I am getting consistent kernel panics on startup. If I unplug the computer and remove the battery, it starts up normally one time. But if I shut down and power up again, I get a kernel panic."

Thanks to everyone playing along at home. I hope this thread is useful to someone besides me down the road some day.

>
> Thanks to everyone playing along at home. I hope
> this thread is useful to someone besides me down
> the road some day.


hey, someday is today! I have the same exact problem!
my sonnet 1.2ghz g4 upgrade is being difficult and will not boot under OSX 10.4.11

I've programed my AGP 450Mhz sawtooth, installed the firmware for the sonnet processor 3.1 as well as SonnetCache 1.4 successfully (all OSX), then the installer wants to restart -- ok so I restart and the computer monitor just hangs in a deep sleep (same dilemma as previous posts).

Ok...so I shutdown, and slap the orig. cpu back in, rebooted Tiger, then changed start up disc to OS9.2.2, and proceeded to install the drivers/firmware for classic 9.2.2 now and it wants to reboot --

voila, classic 9.2.2 boots as normal!!! EXCEPT theres a dialogue box that says theres a cache memory failure or something, but then I hit ok, and it continues to load classic 9.2.2! Then I look at the system profile and it reads machine speed: 1200Mhz (so far...so good).

So I thought -- ok good -- now lets switch start up disc back to Tiger 10.4.11, then I hit restart --
Monitor wakes up and Tiger boots up without a problem!! (and theres not cache error this time in Tiger like there was in classic). double checked and system profile also reads 1.2Ghz in Tiger.


>>> NOW FOR THE REAL PROBLEM ---- the sonnet CPU will refuse to reboot again once Tiger shuts down!! The montor will show no signal again...the computer only responds after I plug in the original cpu, boot up Tiger, change start up disc to classic, shutdown Tiger, plug in the sonnet cpu, boot up classic (which sonnet seems to like), then switch start up disc back to Tiger, and reboot in Tiger... (its the same cycle...rinse and repeat :/ ).

My conclusion so far...sonnet likes classic, and only boots OSX Tiger right after classic --
I will not respond if I hadn't loaded classic prior...why is it doing this??

FYI: this was the long route that I took to realize that my sonnet CPU was the culprit, and that I also have to unplug the power and reinserting the batter for it to respond (just as original post)



Edited 1 times. Last edit at 02/12/08 05:40AM by sin2k5.