PowerMac G5 often fails to boot
  • Caterpillar
    Caterpillar
    Posts: 33 from 2016/12/29
    Hi all,
    often my PowerMac dual G5 with MOS 3.9 (still to update to latest MOS but this is not MOS related I think) fails to boot, the screen remains black and if I wait further minutes the fans slowly accelerate going crazy upto full speed. Every time I have to restart with the power button, often I have to try even 4 or 5 times before I finally see the grey boot screen appearing. Very frustrating. This situation has apparently worsened during the last months, while initially the issue happened very seldom. I suspect this problem may be related to the HD, which perhaps fails to speed up or to start. It is still an old SATA 1 though which always worked perfectly. Any suggestions ? Thanks.
  • »11.10.18 - 11:56
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  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    Amigaharry2
    Posts: 1283 from 2010/1/6
    From: EU-Austria (Wien)
    I guess that happens after loading boot.img, right?
    In most oft that cases the problem seems to be poseidon.prefs (USB-Stack). Try to delete ENVARC:Sys/poseidon.prefs and reboot without any further action.

    Some hint to G5:
    It is very helpfull to have a "emercency" installation on a CF-Card, fittet als slave to the internal IDE-Bus (CF2IDE-Adapter required) - the DVDRW is configured as master and you should'nt touch that config (will give troubles with Open Firmware device aliases)
    If that CF has a small HFS-partition including boot.img and a big bootable SFS-partition with MOS installed (called "CF1" or anything else), then you may boot as follows from Open Firmware-prompt:

    > boot cd1:,\boot.img bootdevice=CF1

    Don't give CF1 a higher boot-priority than your normal boot-partition, because MOS tries to boot from the partition with highest priority (as old AOS does).

    Now you are in a separate MOS-Installation and can "repair" your main-installation.....or use it as origin-testinstalltion for games or other software.
    Peg2, 3xPowerMac G5, 2xPowerbookG4, 2x MacMiniG4, Efika (again), A3000T and life is never boring.....
  • »11.10.18 - 12:42
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  • MorphOS Developer
    zukow
    Posts: 645 from 2005/2/9
    From: Poland
    1) Check G5 with ASD.
    2) Move cpu1 -> cpu2 socket and cpu2->cpu1 socket(i had similar issues and this helped)

    [ Edited by zukow 11.10.2018 - 14:45 ]
  • »11.10.18 - 12:45
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  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    koszer
    Posts: 1251 from 2004/2/8
    From: Poland
    Does it give any sound?
    Does the white LED blink?

    I'd try zukow's idea - it very much reminds me issues that I had when replacing CPU modules.
  • »11.10.18 - 13:01
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  • Caterpillar
    Caterpillar
    Posts: 33 from 2016/12/29
    Thanks for the hints folks,
    @Amigaharry2 - I have not that CF2IDE hardware, usually when I need an emergency/recovery boot I simply use the MOS installation CD though. Anyway, I don't think my system reaches the loading stage of boot.img, because when this issue happens the monitor remains in standby mode, which is still a very early stage AFAIK. Also, when this happens I think I can't hear the noise of the HD spinning, that's why I suspected it was related to the HD

    @koszer: no, no sounds and no blinking

    @zukow: uhm ok I still have the ASD image to burn, I will check as you suggested. I will also try to swap the CPU modules once I have some time for it.

    Thnx
  • »12.10.18 - 11:57
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  • Caterpillar
    Caterpillar
    Posts: 33 from 2016/12/29
    Update: the guy who sold me his PowerMac also had given me a link to download the ASD 2.5.8.dmg... I decided to burn it but after three attempts I gave up. The CDs seem ok but my PowerMac refuses to boot from them. Even by opening the boot menu with ALT I can't see the ASD cd as a boot option... so I can't pursue this avenue.
  • »17.10.18 - 12:28
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  • Paladin of the Pegasos
    Paladin of the Pegasos
    koszer
    Posts: 1251 from 2004/2/8
    From: Poland
    So it's time to swap the CPU modules then apparently :(

    If the machine doesn't work even after CPU swap then I can send you some (well, maybe all of) spare CPU cards that I have. At least some of them should work. But you will need the ASD anyway, to do thermal calibration.
  • »17.10.18 - 13:48
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