Weirdly appears to just be hard drive failure. It's my first sad mac. Sorry for the false alarm [or maybe not, I don't know].

The HD failure is possibly coupled with the 5300 having a PC card issue or an issue with this specific card.

The 5300c has a RAM Card in it? Open her up and press down on the cards to make sure they are properly seated. Then check your cabling.

What OS is on the Card and on the HD and what are their relative sizes? I think there is something here than meets the eye.

There is a RAM card.  But it's only when the Card's inserted that it freezes.  Could some weird PCMCIA issue have screwed up the IDE bus?  [After the first Sad Mac, I subsequently formatted the Card, wrote to it, booted from it, and then it froze and went back to Sad Mac.]

There was an (I think) 8.5 Disk Tools [floppy] System Folder on the PC card (16gb = 14.4 or so, I think) and 8.6 on the HD (which is I think 2.0gb).  I'll open it up tonight or tomorrow and check the RAM card and replace the HD as a test.

[http://www.amazon.com/Digigear-PCMCIA-adapter-supports-memory/dp/B00MFVG9XO/ - This is the culprit.  It was sent to me by the manufacturer as a PCMCIA replacement for a Cardbus adapter.  Now that I read the description... is it possible this isn't fully PCMCIA compliant?  The other adapter, which I'm returning and which is Cardbus, did read on the 5300, although it wouldn't work properly.]

[that read on my 3400; it's not Cardbus]

Click to expand...

The 3400 is Cardbus compliant:  it usually requires a one-wire mod to activate it, but someone may have already done that on your machine.  In any case, the fact that your adapter reads okay on a 3400 doesn't prove 100% that it's not Cardbus.

If you can find an adapter that you know for absolute certain is 16 bit PCMCIA and not 32 bit Cardbus, I would suggest installing it with a blank CF in the 5300 and formatting / installing the OS on it there.

Your other option - seeing as you're opening the thing up to check out the HD anyway - is to put a 2.5" IDE to CF adapter in and have your CF hard drive substitute internal, leaving your PCMCIA slots for other things.

raoulduke said:

it's only when the Card's inserted that it freezes.

Click to expand...

So it's back to booting okay now, without the card?

Could some weird PCMCIA issue have screwed up the IDE bus?

Click to expand...

Pretty doubtful. I don't think those two buses are connected in any way. The only thing I can think of is a plain old electrical short in the PCMCIA slot has scrambled your PRAM or something. Do you have an external SCSI drive or CD you could test-boot from?

Try doing a PRAM reset, aka power manager reset.

http://www.amazon.com/Digigear-PCMCIA-adapter-supports-memory/dp/B00MFVG9XO/- This is the culprit.

Click to expand...

Uh, yeah. There's your problem, as they say ...

Output Interface 32-bit CardBus Type II PC Card

Click to expand...

Cardbus cards are not backwards compatible with PCMCIA slots.  You want an absolutely definitely 16 bit only PCMCIA card.

NB, you won't have any of these issues with a 2.5" IDE/ATA-CF adapter.

... provided you can get the thing to boot at all now, obs.

Also, why the Disk Tools floppy?  Not that that is your problem now, but why not a fresh install of a full system? 

NB that when you're installing a system from another machine, you need to choose the option in the installer to "Install software for any mac"

It's also important that your CF card can do UDMA - ie, can act as a hard drive to the system.  The card manufacturer's specs should tell you.

Thanks.

*)  Yes, it's back to booting for the most part.  Crashes with the card almost like clockwork > Sad Mac.

1)  Cardbus:  Yea I worded a lot of that unhelpfully I'm guessing.  The adapter is supposed to be PCMCIA compliant (it says it's 16bit compliant but it also says it's 32bit compliant.  Now I'm wondering if there's a voltage issue.  But I also noted it read on the 5300 a few times - so maybe it is 16bit compliant and has a voltage issue... not great.  But I won't be using it on the 5300.

2)  As for the HD, I don't hear anything - when I have time later I'll swap it out, but either the HD is dead or... worse.  But it may just be purely coincidental, with the HD failing just at that time.  I'm not the original owner and it had the original HD in.  I got it two months ago or so.

3)  I don't know why I didn't think of resetting the PRAM.  However, it just seems to shut down when I try.  I'll replace the [dead] battery later and take a look inside and then try again.

Well interestingly this card does work well on the 3400.  It seems to support UDMA.  It just clearly cannot be used as PCMCIA unless the PC Card setup is also Cardbus compliant [that's kind of mincing words...].  But I'll also look up IDE/ATA > CF adapters.  I didn't know those specifically existed.

[4)  When I formatted it on the 5300 [because there's something really screwed on the 3400's board - actually I'll PM you on that because you may have some useful thoughts] the only medium I had connected was the floppy module and the disk I had in it happened to be the Disk Tools floppy you can make with 8.5 (which I was trying to install via the 3400).]  I just wanted to test booting and I was curious whether any different symptoms would present on the 3400.

raoulduke said:

The adapter is supposed to be PCMCIA compliant (it says it's 16bit compliant but it also says it's 32bit compliant.

Click to expand...

Not exactly. My reading of this:

Compliant with 16/32-bit(CardBus) Type II PC Card interface (JEIDA 4.2)

Click to expand...

is that the card is compatible with a 16/32 bit slot, but not a 16 bit slot.

ie, Cardbus 32 bit slots are required to be backwards compatible with PC Card / PCMCIA 16 bit cards, so the slot can reasonably be described as a 16/32 bit slot, but that doesn't necessarily mean the card is 16 bit.

Make sense?

Well interestingly this card does work well on the 3400.  It seems to support UDMA.  It just clearly cannot be used as PCMCIA

Click to expand...

UDMA is a function of the CF card.  The adapter is just a straight-through pin to pin adapter, with no logic.

At this stage I would suggest booting from an external SCSI device and checking out what all is in fact good on that 5300.

I wasn't too clear, but I was sort of inferring the same thing.  I think the compliance issue goes beyond Cardbus, though - since it hasn't worked properly on either the 3400 or Kanga either.  I also read there's a potential grounding-wire issue (which could speak specifically to the electrical issues).  I haven't had time yet but i will boot the 5300 off an external and check it out.  I've only been able to reset the PRAM once from among dozens of tries.  It's possible attempting to use the bootlegged battery was affecting that, though.

I've been talking to the company that sold me the adapter.  They suggested I try a smaller memory card.  Is 16gb too much for OS 9?  If there's a maximum I would imagine it's way more than that [just of storage in general I mean not specifically of flash cards].  Any thoughts?

I actually also remember seeing (I forget in what context - it may have been SD > CF adapters) 2gb and under limits noted.  Is it possible this adapter simply won't work with over 2gb of memory?  Is that an obvious principle that I have just missed...?

You should be able to petition it into 2gb partitions. If that's not going to work a smaller card should, although you may need a third party formatting software either way.

Raoulduke, you misread my post. In "RAM Card in the 5300", is there added RAM in the system, if so, is that card loose? It is not the CF FlashRAM card or PCMCIA slot. Only way to tell is to unscrew the keyboard, lift up the keyboard and look at the upper left area where the PCMCIA Slots are. That is where RAM Expansion goes into the 5300 on a special card that goes into a slot below the PCMCIA cage. If the RAM expansion card is loose, you can press it back in until you hear a soft snap or a pop.

Now, lets dissect the rest of the posts. Bunsen has it right. So excuse me for back tracking an repeating questions.

With nothing - does the 5300 boots on its own? Does the 3400 boot up on its own? What system is in the 5300? What system is on the 3400? By 3400 I'm including the Kanga as well.

With the 5300, you want a minimum of 2GBs, a max of 4 or 8 GBs but it needs to be partitioned into 2GB Slices. System 7 will only work on 2GB Slices, OS8 using HFS+ can handle 4GB Slices. But you can not partition on OS8 or OS9 and partition it, even in 2GB Slices, it is in HFS+ and not HSF. You need to partition it in System 7. Then you can Format it. If you are partitioning in OS8 or OS9 and then formatting it in System 7, you just confused the system and it crashed.

Norton should be able to fix this if your System 7 is corrupt on the 5300.

When you get the 5300 running, put the CF into a PCMCIA Adapter and put it in the slot. Run HD Set Up or a third party partition software. I recommend Sliverlining but that is my pet peeve.

1) remove all partitions on the CF Card.

2) set up 2GB partitions on the card.

3) format each partition.

4) the drive icons for each partition should come up after the formatting is done. Eject the card.

5) reboot system without the cards.

6) Put in cf card back in the PCMCIA Slot. The drive icons should come up.

Now to test the CF as a bootable card.

1)Drag the system folder into one of the two cf icons, preferably the first one.

2) Open the copied system folder to see if it copied and to bless it.

3) Control Panel -> Start Up Disk - select the drive icon with the system to start up from.

4) Reboot the 5300. The card may or may not pop out.

- if it does pop out, put it back in.

- it if does not pop out, don worry about it.

It will take a while for the 5300 to search the drive and then the PCMCIA Slot to see who has the bootable system. Once the smiley Mac comes up, it will boot from the CF Card from here on - whether it is in the PCMCIA Slot or in the IDE Slot.

For a 5300 or any NON-OSX System 8GB is more than enough. Anything more is just a waste unless you want OSX on a G3 and 16GB would be a minimum for that.

I didn't address your post properly. I apologize. There were RAM cards in the 5300/3400/Kanga. I had reseated the one in the 5300 after the problem and before posting, so I didn't think that was it, but maybe I should be very certain of that when going through it again. As for HFS/+, at this point I'm really only dealing with 8.6 (5300c) and 9 (probably 9.0.4 or something; Kanga) - so I'm probably going to leave everything in HFS+.

I more or less relayed (to Shopdigi or whatever they're called) Bunsen's thoughts - that the card really isn't fully 16-bit compatible. The thing is that they sent this very specifically as a replacement because the Cardbus card I bought from them was totally incompatible. When I explained that their card didn't appear to actually be fully 16-bit compatible, then they brought up the size of the SD card. That's why I asked - not partition issues but whether there might be a size incompatibility. I don't want to dwell on that because that was largely to refute what I thought to be a capricious defense. [it's funny because I was very specific - they knew this was for a Powerbook 5300c from 1995 lol.]

Ugh. So next weekend (Elfen), I will very carefully and methodically test out your process on the 5300c. As I have mentioned; the card did boot the 3400 (I think) and 5300 - but only one on the 5300. Every other time I try to start with the CF in the 5300 it just goes to Sad Mac; and every time I insert it after boot on either 3400/Kanga/5300 it freezes (and on the 5300 then restarts to Sad Mac).

I guess what I didn't convey well here is that maybe if I preempt it on boot I can format it (that's been the issue with booting with it in), but if it freezes on insert... do I really want to risk using this card if I can avoid it?

[And Bunsen I'll have to look at my 3400 board in relation to a wire mod. For some things it should (anyway?) work without. I'm assuming the Kanga doesn't have these issues, but it may also not be fully compliant [in which case it would definitely be partially compliant like many 3400s (some 3400s are not compliant at all as I understand what little I've read)].

(I was using 16gb because that's all I had. I now have 128mb also. But yeah I do intend to use Classilla and I'm probably stuck with 96mb. I want to test out Tiger with XPostFacto also. )

(http://lowendmac.com/2014/low-end-macs-compleat-guide-to-the-kanga-powerbook-g3/ - The Kanga's lack of a ground plane was what I was thinking of)

OK, I see how it is.

That second card... It's a 16GB? Since it crashes, something is wrong with the partition and formatting. The one that does boot (I'm assuming it too is a CF), you can put into a CF to IDE Adapter into the 5300 and it will boot it from the IDE. You will need a single CF to IDE Adapter as Dual CF to IDE do not work on Macs at all. See from the "Booting From CF Thread":

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/23406-booting-from-a-compact-flash-drive/&do=findComment&comment=243936

When the 5300 boots from the CF in the IDE, you can put in that faulty CF into the PCMCIA and repartition it and reformat it from there.

Those CF to IDE adapters you can get from ebay for a couple dollars - no more than $5 with free shipping. And only the Single CF Adapters will work on a Mac, the Dual CF Adapters wont. The Dual CF Adapters will work on a PC however... The only problem with these adapters is that they literally hang around inside the machine. You can use tape and thin pieces of foam to make a case that wraps around it that makes it rest properly inside the machine.

While on ebay, you can also look into CF cards and PATA SSDs. Maybe it's seasonal but lately I have been seeing prices drop lately.

Good luck.

When I explained that their card didn't appear to actually be fully 16-bit compatible, then they brought up the size of the SD card.

Click to expand...

They appear to be talking out of their hats.

Elfen, I was planning on going through your steps tonight or tomorrow but I have a concern - on the Kanga my PCMCIA - SD converter freezes every time I insert it (pretty similarly to the 3400c and actually also 5300c).  So I don't think I'm going to be able to get to the point of actually formatting it.  Initialization options have only come up once or twice.  It's possible it's because the computer thinks the PCMCIA card should get 5V, but the SD cards seem to all need 5V.  So I got a cardbus > CF adapter (and also a CF > SD adapter) and a CF card (they're 3.3V or 5V).  So I think I may hold off till some of that stuff gets here.

Sorry for posting so late.

The SD needs a minimum of 3.3V, as per Raspberry Pi's use of 3.3Vs instead of 5V. Question is, what kind of adapter do you have?

At worst, I think, you should put it into a PC Laptop and format it in FAT16/32 before putting into the Mac.

It actually gets worse.  I replaced the HD and hooked it up to a SCSI enclosure that has electrical outlets on the back of it (which I say to distinguish this first part where the enclosure was empty).  The power manager still won't reset.  It now seems to reset once, chime, then when it comes to reset a second time it shuts down entirely and the (battery) charge light goes on.  There's no battery in it but given my experiments with rebuilding its battery that might be ominous.  I replaced the power board with an older board with different issues but not the PRAM issue and it was exactly the same.

When I actually put an HD in the enclosure, it went to Sad Mac I think when I tried to reset the PRAM; it just wouldn't boot to the external HD, otherwise - even when I tried to force it to the SCSI ID number.  For these trials I removed the RAM card and tried removing/keeping in the ATA drive - neither made a difference (except on uptime with the RAM card).

I have two specifically SD adapters: http://www.amazon.com/Digigear-PCMCIA-adapter-supports-memory/dp/B00MFVG9XO; http://www.ebay.com/itm/261556993009 .  I think my laptop has an SD slot.  The PRAM etc. issues may not be related to the PCMCIA issues, but there clearly is something that goes beyond just the flash memory.

It doesn't seem to be able to boot from floppy.  It starts to boot normally and then on the smiling mac it spits out the floppy and goes back to the flashing disk image.  I've tried this with a half dozen disk images now.  And with non-system disks it doesn't do that... So is this a ROM problem?

raoulduke said:

It doesn't seem to be able to boot from floppy.  It starts to boot normally and then on the smiling mac it spits out the floppy and goes back to the flashing disk image.  I've tried this with a half dozen disk images now.  And with non-system disks it doesn't do that... So is this a ROM problem?

Click to expand...

Sorry for the delay...

The Floppy for that should be OS8. But that can be difficult to make. As for the floppy being spit out, it could be the disk is bad or the drive's head is broken, as in the past people used to take a pair of pliers to a stuck floppy and yank it out, ripping the top read/write head off its mounting. So it is not a ROM problem. Only way to be sure is to remove the floppy and remove its cover and inspect the top head. Much easier to just swap the drive with a working unit!

I think you can turn the unit on as a SCSI Drive and connect it to another Mac through the SCSI Port and inspect the drive like modern Macs can connect by FireWire Mode, but I forget how that is done. If you put the drive in a 5300, format it and install a system on it, it may not be compatible to the 3400. In the least it should be OS8 for the 3400. I still think its a partitioning and formatting problem.

Elfen said:

I think you can turn the unit on as a SCSI Drive and connect it to another Mac through the SCSI Port and inspect the drive like modern Macs can connect by FireWire Mode, but I forget how that is done.

Click to expand...

You'd need a docking SCSI adaptor to mount the Powerbook in SCSI target disk mode.  The docking adaptors I've had (mainly made by APS) have a switch to allow the adaptor to be used to connect external SCSI drives to the Powerbook, or switch to allow the Powerbook to mounted as a SCSI disk.

The floppy drive has been very well tested and works perfectly.  The disk also works perfectly.

I was going to say the SCSI enclosure didn't work but it appears to be booting to OS 9 from an external CD drive.  I guess the HD I had been using died.

It sounds like I left an HD in there (not the one that apparently died).  OS 9 cannot recognize it.  I will have to work on it next weekend.

Lets go back to the very beginning...

You got... A CF in a PCMCIA adapter that crashed a 3400 and gives problems on a 5300? It gave  a Sad Mac on the 3400 and then bars on boot when rebooted?

Sounds like a dying 3400. Check the ram cards and CPU Card on the 3400 and make sure things are tight with them. Same on the 5300 (RAM Cards as there is no CPU card on the 5300). Lets try to get these two machines to boot with the hard drive and make sure there are no problems when booting. If you did a PCMCIA to Cardbus mod to either machine, undo it and get rid of it. This is only for PCMCIA ONLY!

- - - - - - -

Put them to the side, you got another laptop to work with that has PCMCIA Slots? I think a Windows laptop was mentioned. Lets use it for a second. Turn it on and let it boot to Windows/Linux/What ever you have. Once you have the desktop and the had drive stops, put in the PCMCIA with the CF in it. It may complain about needing drivers, which a standard set of drivers is on the Windows Install CD. Once the drivers are installed, turn on FDisk, PartitionMagic, GPart (there's a version for windows), etc. to look at and create partitions on the CF Card.

Select the drive number (usually between 2 to 5 most of the time it is 2), as a letter is not defined. When the drive is selected, examine the Partition Information on the drive. Note them down. Then Delete THEM ALL! Quite the program and Reboot the system. This should delete the partition information on the drive.

Once rebooted, turn on the partitioning software you were using. Like before select the drive number of the CF Card. Partition it in 2GB Slices! If you have a 16GB CF Card, make 8 - 2GB partition slices! Assign each slice a letter ID! Make the first slice as "Active." In the case of FDisk - this might not be possible but its OK. Quit the program and reboot the system.

Once rebooted again, go to "My Computer" icon. Each slice will come up but they are not formatted. Format each slice. Shut down and reboot. At this point the CF should be usable.

NOTE: Under Windows, you need to reboot each time you make changes to the partition table of any drive. Under Linux you do not need to reboot.

- - - - - - - -

NOW (!!!) you got a CF Card partitioned and formatted for DOS/Windows. Get a Mac, lets use the 5300. You will need on it:

A minimum of System 7.5.5

PC Exchange and its drivers

HD SetUp

PC Exchange will allow the Mac to read PC DOS/Windows formatted disks.

Turn on the Mac 5300. Once on Desktop, put in the CF Card in the PCMCIA slot. The Mac will complain about being a PC Formatted device, just answer Yes or OK to the questions it asks. Then a drive icon will pop up for each slice you created.

Now you should be able to format each slice into Mac OS. If you cant, you will need to open HD SetUp and repartition the slices into Mac OS slices, each one 2GB each. And then you can format each slice. (Note: When I did this I did not had to reboot the Mac 5300, but I was using System 7.6.1)

With each slice converted to a Mac Slice, you should be able to use it on the 3400 and the 5300. And out of these slices, you should be able to put a system on one or more of the slices and boot it from the PCMCIA - but after you have the system folder blessed!

- - - - - - -

Notes:

- This is for HSF Mac OS Format. If you want HSF+, make sure you have OS 8.1 not OS8. HSF+ Will not work under System 7 or OS8, it will only work for OS8.1 (Some people have gotten HSF+ to work on OS8, but I find it too flakey on OS8 to be reliable.)

- Work with 2GB Slices and make sure that they work under HSF+ first before changing them into 4GB Slices.

- Before you put a system on the CF drive, make sure you can copy files and access those files fro the CF Drive. If you can - delete the files and then put in the System.

The adapters giving problems are all directly PCMCIA/Cardbus to SD.  I successfully set up my 16gb card - the one that had the weird OS 8.5 Disk Tools System Folder on it - with three partitions - Documents, Virtual Memory, and Permanent Storage (because I couldn't think of what to do with all that space).  In any event, there seems to be no problem with the PCMCIA > CF and CF > SD adapters (in concert).

However, the Cardbus > CF adapter I bought says it only runs on Windows and OS 10.2.x and after.  It registers as "Duo ATA" on the Kanga but I can't open it and it clearly doesn't just show up as ATA (like the PCMCIA > CF > SD does).  And it causes Drive Setup to freeze.  [On OS 9, Drive Setup shouldn't have problems with non-Apple drives (or accessible PC Cards) - at least in my experience.]  But now I can't find evidence there are any Cardbus (or 32-bit) CF or SD adapters that actually run on pre-OS X Mac OS.

I will turn around and check the successful card setup out on the 5300.  I'm also probably going to get a cheap 5300cs as a parts-source for the 5300c just in case.  In any event, this seems to be an issue with PC Card (generally) to SD directly - manifested most unusually in the 5300c.

I may not have mentioned this crucial detail - the HD problems are all data-issues.  Every HD powers up and spins inside the 5300c, but nothing has yet been recognized [since the first Sad Mac].  This includes several HDs I know are both good and bootable.  I just got a new HD cable, so I will use the new cable and a few drives when I get the chance.

I was going to say, Elfen, if you can clue me in to any factors you think might affect the cards, I can test them systematically and make like a grid along with a correlation of the effects.

I replaced the 5300 HD cable to no effect.  The (Apple 10gb Kanga) HD spins.  I boot to OS 9 with an external CD drive.  It doesn't recognize anything on the ATA bus...  so is this a bus issue?

Actually follow-up; there's a jumper I think on the farthest pin-set from the main 44pins.  I think that's probably a 'Master' setting.  I think it was there by default, but it was there when I just tested (and I'd previously tested with and without but with the old cable).  I can't believe it being jumpered to Master would prevent it from working, but what is the default setting for a 5300's HD?

Ok so the 5300c's bus is fine; this is at least partly a drive issue.  The drive in question, with a jumper, spins but isn't recognized.  Without a jumper it spins and shuts down in about 5 second cycles.  Another drive works fine in both the 5300c and cs.

(Elfen you were right, the floppy that I normally put disk tools on had died.  The SCSI CD drive will no longer boot either the c or cs, but I think it may be a termination issue.  This has come up because the 5300c gets really weird screen ripples with the OS 9 drive I had in it, so I'm downgrading to its original 7.5.2, which has been really hard since I wasn't able to use disk tools lol.  Eventually I broke out the G4, attached the drive via USB and just deleted the System folder.  The pre-8 [7.6?] installers are garbage by comparison.)

[(Oh, and just so nobody jumps on the screen ripple issue; it starts just before the extensions start to load on OS 9.  It does not occur before that; it does not persist after restarting; and it has no correlation to the amount of time the machine has been powered on - only to the time from boot, when booting into OS 9.  I didn't want to use 9 to begin with, it just happened to be on the drive and the cs (happily) had a 56mb card that I put in the c.)]

I'm glad you sorted that out. I hope now things will be easy for you when you replace the floppy drive. You should be able to replace the drive guts with another working one like a LC 475 or Powerbook Duo.