The mother of all OS X problems

Zarembo

Contributing member
I'm at my wit's end. My powerbook g3, complete with its repaired and now broken again hinges is definitely on its last legs.

It had a kernel panic yesterday. So, I pulled out my trusty Diskwarrior application, ran it through its paces, but hey! It didn't work. I ran Norton, no positive results.

So tried the usual fsck -y. It repaired some files but when I tyed exit, it started to go through the loading process but stopped after:

Welcome to Macintosh.
Ethernet (BMac): Polled transmit timeout - 2
Ethernet (BMac): Link up at 10 Mbps - Half Duplex

Then nothing further happens. The loading process hangs right there.

I rebooted by pulling the plug, tried using Disk Utility, it found some problems but it still wouldn't boot. I can keep coming back to the Unix terminal by holding down command - S

I erased the OS X partition using disk utility, reinstalled Jaguar, and wala! All I got was the grey screen with the spinning icon showing the system was loading. After at least a half hour wait, I did a hard restart unplugging the machine and the battery I get the same results when I opted to hold down the Command - S key combination. The loading process stops as it did earlier.

I'm considering erasing the entire drive and reformatting it, once I'm able to get my files off the other partitions on the drive.

The OS 9 partitions won't boot properly either. While they will bring up an OS 9 desktop, the software is not fully functioning. I can't make a network connection to transfer my files to my other computers. The network locks up under OS 9 when I attempt to load it.

Has anyone else had a similar experience? Any advice?
 
... I'd bet the hard drive is hosed. One thing you can try, but it costs a little money, is getting a Firewire hard drive enclosure and slapping the laptop drive in it. OtherWorld Computing has them for about $70-90. Make sure to get one with the Oxford 911 chipset. Anyway, once it's in the enclosure, try mounting the drive on your iMac. If it mounts and you can save your data, excellent. If not, you have a new drive enclosure to play with.

If you don't want to spend the money, and have a Pismo laying around (probably not or you'd be using it most likely), you could slap the drive in it and boot it in target disk mode. Other than that, I don't know what to recommend. Let us know what happens.
 
No new ram. No changes in this machine's configuration in some time.

I think the hard drive suspiscion may be a good possibility. I've just reformatted the drive and run Norton on it. No defects at this point. I'll keep everyone posted as this proceeds.

One thing I have noticed is that even my cd-rom disks won't permit the boot process to bring up a properly functioning system. I get finder crashes from a cd-rom boot disk, unless I hold down the shift key on booting. Now what would cause that? Bad ram, a loose motherboard? Yes, under system 9 I've zapped the p-ram and rebuilt the desktop.

Thanks for the response thus far. All good theories.
 
You might consider taking it in to a Apple specialist if you have access to one. It sounds to me like there might be some severe hardware problems. You said earlier that the screen had been broken but repaired. Were there any other parts that were repaired or replaced? How exactly did it break. Under what kind of conditions was it used? These questions might help to identify some hardware issues.
 
The screen hinges have failed twice. But in each case there has been no damage to the video cables. Thanks for the thought.
 
hmm.....I have a friend who has a broken Wallstreet that is broken. If you can identify the parts that are causing the problem, i'm sure he'd be willing to part with it for a decent good price. That is if you can locate what is causing the problem. In my friends case I believe everything works fine but the screen and keyboard.
 
Thanks, I'm going after a 17 inch portable as soon as I can get it. Though I'd like to pass this machine along to a friend or relative when I get it restored. Fortunately all my data is accessible and available rightaway.

Cheers!
 
well, in the process of breaking your hinges, you may have damaged more. i believe, based upon recent evidence of my own, that anything that interferes with proper data transmission will cause a kernel panic and potentially inability to boot. this could be dirty or loose connections, read heads, ram, or any other parts that are essential in data communication processes. in my case it was dirt on a boot cd that was deposited there from dirty read heads on the cd drive. once everything was cleaned up, all was back to normal.
 
I replaced the hard drive with the old one. No better results. I'm wondering if the motherboard has come loose. I'll try punching it back down when I re-install the other hard drive.

I guess I've verified that its not the hard drive. What next? Bad ram? Any other speculation?
 
I emailed my friend about his Wallstreet. Here's his reply.

>>>>>My message to him<<<<<<
Do you still have your powerbook that was broken? What was broken on it? Was it just the screen and keyboard?


>>>>>>His reply<<<<<<<<<
I think its just the screen, keyboard, and case. Maybe something called the pmu unit also, i forget.

He said he's thinking about selling it on ebay. He figures its not worth too much. Let me know if you're interested. I believe if you took the insides of his and the case/screen/keyboard on yours you'd have one functioning machine.
 
No, Dixonbm, its not me although were pretty close to each other in Alaska terms, we're a mere 700 or so miles apart.

He has a good idea tho, I might be able to afford to purchase an old Ti-book with the parting out of my trusty ol Wallstreet. I pulled and reseated the memory, reseated the daughtercard, but no change in the odd behavior. Oh well just so my big book gets here fast!
 
Anyone know of a good unix site that I could survey on this issue? I figure someone might know a bit more about the boot process and why this thing is hanging on my Wallstreet.

Thanks
 
I pulled one of each respective ram chip, in both instances the same symptoms occurred.

I'm down to the processor card or the main board. Now I need to find a working processor card and give it a try.

Thanks for the responses and helpful advice.
 
I moved this thread to hardware (obviously) because it sounds like Zarembo is having hardware troubles.

Good luck.

Doug
 
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