My Peg2/G4 behaves strange when booting cold:

I see the countdown of my bootprocess in openfirmware, then the boot starts... but then the text freezes and nothing happens.
Letting the PEG run for a certail time, it works flawless.

I also tried to boot a CD when cold: Same result, the machine lock.
I re-seated the cpu, ram and ata-cables, but no success.

Any of you knows what might me the problem ?

If OF boots complete and can start bootmenue, then hardware normaly should be OK. This seems to be the case here. OF initialises/tests motherboard and all fitted cards, but not content of connected HD or CD. Maybe there is an issue with one of that drives which cause that behaviour

Some things you can do:
Disconnect IDE-HD from IDE-bus and try again from CD and vice versa.
Check backup-battery (remove it, disconnect PEG for 15sec from power and press reset. Then start again without battery.
Do you have a Linux-live-CD? Would be interessting if such a CD works...

Are you sure it's not just your power supply dying of old age. Also, check capacitors on the mobo and CPU card.

I swapped the battery, but no success.
I'll try some linux live CD , I think nikitarix was a good one.

For capacitors: Are there well known candidates to test ? There is a lot of them.

I saw some testcommands in OF, but I didn't succeed in using them. Is there an OF-manual ?

Type in g...gle: genesi pegasos open firmware manual

Actually, you might have a hardware issue. My Pegasos2/G4 works 100% stable with current version.
There was occasional locks during boot with previous MorphOS version, but it is now fully fixed.

What do you mean with "booting cold"? A "cold-reboot" or booting when Chips are cold? Does that mean PEG boots when chips have warmed up?

When MOS-Kernal is load, you will see a rotating slash during depacking - do you see that?
If you see it, it crashes at next step (starting Kernel after decompression).

Please check following in your OF:

Type in OF:
printenv and check output. What is shown for bootdevice, bootcommand and bootfile.
devalias and look whether there is a entry for CD (should be something like /pci@8000....). If yes,
then insert MOS-Live-CD and type:
boot cd boot.img BM BD=MorphOSBoot

If it works you will enter early startup, where you can check your devices (HD: are all partitions mounted?, etc.)
Then press boot and hopefully Peg boots to Ambient.

One hint: It is reported, that BootCDs, burned on Wintel-PCs are sometimes not working or not properly burned..

"boot cold" means temperature. If the PEG2 ran for 5 minutes, everything works.

I bootet niktarix which also stalled when opening the X-server.
So i suspect there is some gfxcard-issue.

Unfortunately I have to wait for the machine to cool down, which takes some time...

Next time I boot, I'll try the OF-commands.

Again, how old is the power supply?

It's possibly a fan sticking on power-up and allowing something to overheat. Ironically, warming the system might just warm the fan grease and get it moving again.

Failing that then I'd go with jaca with PSU as likely culprit.

Don't even bother trying to test the caps on the Peg. It's not an A1200; many of them are SMD.

Update time:
I swapped the gfx card, but no success.
Now I swapped the powersupply, gfxcard, RAM.

The powersupply is as old as the PEG2. The new one is 1 year old.
Three is no cpu fan, as the G4 has a large heatpipe.

Stay tunes for more results


[ Edited by judas 09.04.2020 - 21:59 ]

To finish this thread, I have to tell, that it seemed to be the PSU.
I changed back gfx and ram and still no powerup-trouble.

So you're remote diagnosis was completely correct and I give you a big "thanks" for your help.

Good to hear. It was probably the power surge at startup (drive spinup, CPU and GPU init, etc) overloading either the PSU proper or one of the rails. Why the system drew less of a power spike when warm might have been due to it still having some charge left in its capacitors rather than actual heat. Or maybe it just changed the electrical properties of whatever was failing in the PSU. Who knows or cares, it's just good it's fixed.

Yeah -fine. Jacadcaps was on the right way.....