Gentlemen, I'm in need of your kind assistance. My PowerBook G3 Wallstreet which has the Sonnet 500MHz G3 CPU, 512MB RAM (2 cards, 8 chips per card) and 80GB internal HD is consistently crashing about a minute or so after booting into OS 9. That holds true whether I boot from the internal hard drive or from an OS 9 boot CD-ROM. The machine just locks up. Sometimes the arrow cursor is frozen and other times not, but the rest of the machine is fully locked up, forcing me to shutdown via Shift-fn-ctrl-Power.
I have read that zapping the PRAM is done by powering off the machine and then doing a Shift-fn-ctrl-Power press. I've done that, but it resolves nothing.
I've also removed the CPU, removed and then reseated both RAM chips (top & bottom of the CPU card), then reseated the CPU itself. (I actually did more than just reseat the RAM cards. I swapped them too for good measure.) After that I was able to boot off an OS9 CD and run the machine for about 6 minutes before I got a crash/lockup.
And again, I get the crashing even when booting from a CD, so hard drive partitioning and the 8GB limit has nothing to do with this.
Could it be the CPU heatsink/heatshield? When I remove the heatshield to access the CPU, I notice underneath the heatsink (and affixed to it), directly above the CPU there is a ring of white CPU heatsink compound. This stuff is still soft, but it all sticks to the heatsink itself, and there is no residual sign of that white stuff on the CPU itself. So could it be that the white heatsink compound needs to be replaced? Could it be the CPU overheating? If not, what else could cause this crashing do you think?
Separate problem now...
I found a fellow by the name of Gulio on Apple's Discussion Forum talking about his experience with Wallstreets and hard drive partitioning. He too had a Sonnet CPU card, big hard drive, 512MB RAM, and OS 10.4 installed via XPOSTFACTO. He said he used 3 paritions:
650MB for OS 9
6.8GB for OS 10.4
And the rest for programs and general storage
He said he used 650MB and 6.8GB so the total partition size for the OS's would be 7.45GB, which he says is the maximum size allowed to avoid trouble.
Here's my problem. I need to know how to partition my drive! I can't get it to reliably mount in an external USB2 or Firewire enclosure on the Wallstreet, although I can get it to mount on my Intel iMac via USB in that external enclosure. And while I can mount and reformat the drive in OS X Lion's Disk Utility, the minimum partition size is 1.07GB! So in order to create a smaller partition of 640MB, I assume that I must use OS 9's Drive Setup 2.0.7?
I had been thinking about yanking my spinning platter 80GB drive, swapping in the 40GB OWC SSD, then booting off my OS 9 CD and formatting the SSD that way. However, I have the lockup/freezing problem to contend with first!
Problems, problems, probelms.
Again, I would greatly appreciate hearing your insights and advice.
Thank you!
I have read that zapping the PRAM is done by powering off the machine and then doing a Shift-fn-ctrl-Power press. I've done that, but it resolves nothing.
I've also removed the CPU, removed and then reseated both RAM chips (top & bottom of the CPU card), then reseated the CPU itself. (I actually did more than just reseat the RAM cards. I swapped them too for good measure.) After that I was able to boot off an OS9 CD and run the machine for about 6 minutes before I got a crash/lockup.
And again, I get the crashing even when booting from a CD, so hard drive partitioning and the 8GB limit has nothing to do with this.
Could it be the CPU heatsink/heatshield? When I remove the heatshield to access the CPU, I notice underneath the heatsink (and affixed to it), directly above the CPU there is a ring of white CPU heatsink compound. This stuff is still soft, but it all sticks to the heatsink itself, and there is no residual sign of that white stuff on the CPU itself. So could it be that the white heatsink compound needs to be replaced? Could it be the CPU overheating? If not, what else could cause this crashing do you think?
Separate problem now...
I found a fellow by the name of Gulio on Apple's Discussion Forum talking about his experience with Wallstreets and hard drive partitioning. He too had a Sonnet CPU card, big hard drive, 512MB RAM, and OS 10.4 installed via XPOSTFACTO. He said he used 3 paritions:
650MB for OS 9
6.8GB for OS 10.4
And the rest for programs and general storage
He said he used 650MB and 6.8GB so the total partition size for the OS's would be 7.45GB, which he says is the maximum size allowed to avoid trouble.
Here's my problem. I need to know how to partition my drive! I can't get it to reliably mount in an external USB2 or Firewire enclosure on the Wallstreet, although I can get it to mount on my Intel iMac via USB in that external enclosure. And while I can mount and reformat the drive in OS X Lion's Disk Utility, the minimum partition size is 1.07GB! So in order to create a smaller partition of 640MB, I assume that I must use OS 9's Drive Setup 2.0.7?
I had been thinking about yanking my spinning platter 80GB drive, swapping in the 40GB OWC SSD, then booting off my OS 9 CD and formatting the SSD that way. However, I have the lockup/freezing problem to contend with first!
Problems, problems, probelms.
Again, I would greatly appreciate hearing your insights and advice.
Thank you!