10.3.9 PPC G5 with kernel panics, sporadic freezing, etc.

A

aruberu

Registered
Hello all,

I've got a iMac G5 PPC running 10.3.9, with a single external HD connected via Firewire and a wired USB mouse/keyboard.

Fairly recently, it's been experiencing a range of crashing; occasionally, it will be a kernel panic (overlayed text log), or it can be the gray "You need to restart" screen, or finally a solid freeze with no other indication (except the fans revving up).

I've tried a few things; first, disconnecting everything except the mouse/keyboard (which didn't help, it will still crash with my Firewire drive disconnected). Next, wiping my internal harddrive and reinstalling 10.3 (also didn't seem to help). Just today, I pulled out my 2 GB of 3rd party RAM and replaced them with my initial memory... and it booted right up into a kernel panic. :/

Usually, it will panic several times back to back (repeated reboots, usually crashing each time on startup), and then finally come up normally and seem to be working "fine" until it suddenly does it again. I've run fsck in single-user a few times, and it always tells me my disk "seems to be okay".

The crashing seems to happen:
* During certain actions in applications, like closing the window while running a DVD in VLC, or sometimes Flash-based items in Firefox
* On startup, including the gray Apple-logo and spinning circle screen, the blue "Loading" screen, and sometimes right after loading the Desktop
* When telling my computer to shut down sometimes (it will close up the Desktop, go to a blue screen, then panic)
* When navigating webpages in Firefox, for no apparent reason

All of those seem like memory-related problems to me, which is why I was hoping to fix this by putting my old memory back in. :? I had considered buying new memory, or getting a new OS (10.4 is the highest I can go due to Classic needs, at least for right now), but I don't intend on wasting money if neither of those would fix this problem...

Is there a way to check the kernel panic logs on my own, except for whenever it overlays the log and freezes? Or is there any additional information I could provide?

****
Posted a kernel log in my second post.
***

Thanks a lot!
 
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Hi, I can't answer your question for sure but I have the same computer and OS and the system isn't working properly. I am dealing with one of the techs on this site to clear it up. he says I have the wrong Install Disc and it doesn't work to reinstall the system. I got a kernal panic when I tried. He had me do a Safe Boot which can straighten out the system and detect hardware problems and then fsck which can repair hardware problems - which I don't have. The Safe Boot corrected one problem out of many. It would be worth trying the Safe Boot first.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ts1417
But I need to know the model number for the Install Disc 17" iMac G5. Is is grey. v 10.3.6 Disc version 1.2, 2Z691-5259-A ? To buy the retail set costs almost as much as the computer is worth. (I want to sell it in good working order)
Maybe this will help you.It can't hurt anything.
Edit Post
 
I tried the suggestion of safe booting; it came up fine, and then following that up with a fsck, it was able to do a "minor" repair and things looked okay. However, I've still had some panics since then.

My discs are gray (I believe that's the "only installs on one computer" kind, correct?) and the first disc says: Mac OS version 10.3.5, Disc version 1.1, 2Z691-5215-A

Finally managed to get a transcription of a kernel log, so here it is in hopes it might help my cause...

System Failure: cpu=0; code=00000001 (Corrupt stack)
Latest crash info for cpu 0;
Exception state (sv=0x2EE9F500)​
PC=0x000940A0; MSR=0x00001030; DAR=0x1C0EC69C; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x00093F8C; R1=0x1C0EC590; XCP=0x00000098 (System failure)​
Backtrace:
backtrace terminated - frame not mapped or invalid: 0x1C0EC590​

Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x2EE9F500)​
PC=0x00078958; MSR=0x00009030; DAR=0x1C0EC69C; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x000788EC; R1=0x1C0EC6B0; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 Data access)​

Backtrace:
backtrace terminated - frame not mapped or invalid: 0x1C0EC6B0​

Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0x326FEA00)​
PC=0xFFFF91D0; MSR=0x0200F030; DAR=0x033C9000; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x905C76A0; R1=0xBFFFED80; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 Data access)​
Click to expand...

One last point I have noticed is that using my original RAM seems to make my computer panic less often than my purchased double 1GB pieces. Regardless it still freezes up much too often, especially since I can recall a time not too far ago when I rarely had to hard-reboot.

Thanks for the help so far, I hope this could be something fixable on my end.
 
A quick search on the forum will show a bunch of threads regarding issues with iMac G5 systems of all revisions. Just to recap, they've all suffered from a bad capacitor problem that affects the logic board and eventually the PSU. Mine was one of them affected and I got it fixed twice under a repair extension program that Apple had which has since expired.

More on the issue described here: http://www.popularmechanics.com/technology/gadgets/news/1707756

Seems like your system might be affected. Rev A & B iMac G5 systems are easy to open up so that you can check for the bad caps. Rev C (iSight model) systems aren't so easy, so you might want to take it to a Mac specialist or the Apple Store to have it looked at.
 
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