Thread

Hard Drive Trouble

PPCMLA PowerPC 16 posts May 29, 2007 to Aug 17, 2007

#1 Tue, 16 Sep 2014 - 00:00 68kMLA

I just installed 4 vmram simms in my 700 and it doesn't seem it be working still limited to same colors resolutions I was before. I've moved them around in different slots still nothing. Do I need to zap the PRAM or do something else?

#1 Tue, 29 May 2007 - 00:12 PPCMLA

My wife's Mac is acting up, and I'm a little out of my element here.

This morning, it KPed on her in the midst of retrieving email. A restart revealed the alternating folder with question mark and Mac face. So no prob, I figured, something weird happened, and the System got unblessed or something.

Well, I booted from the 10.4 DVD, and Disk Utility reported that there was an error: Invalid B-Tree Node Size or some such problem was the root of the trouble. Of course, Disk Utility couldn't fix it.

So off to the local Apple store we go. $99 later, I've got DiskWarrior 4 (the last one I used was 2.0.x on OS 9). I've been running DW4 for about 7 hours now, and I'm still on step 5 (rebuilding the directory) and DW has reported over 3000 hardware errors. You know the message: "Speed reduced due to hardware malfunction: ####"

Yeah, over 3000.

It's a 120 GB disk.

Now I'm no expert on hard drives, but it seems to me that if there really were that many bad sectors (which, supposedly, is what DW is reporting when it increments this counter), the disk would have either been entirely unusable for a long time, or have just suffered a head crash. And seeing as how the disk was working fine until this morning, and a head crash should be pretty obvious, I'm a little perplexed.

The next thing I'm going to try is to build an OS 9 boot drive on a FireWire disk with DW2 and see if I can at least rescue some of the data.

Does anybody have any ideas about this? What are some good disk utils for OS X?

Peace,
Drew
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#2 Tue, 16 Sep 2014 - 02:06 68kMLA

Copied from a random web site:

The Quadra 700 ships with 512 KB VRAM on the motherboard. You can upgrade this to 1 MB by installing two 256 KB or two 512 KB VRAM SIMMs in a single bank. For 2 MB VRAM, install six 256 KB or six 512 KB VRAM SIMMs, filling all VRAM sockets. (Note: the Quadra 700 sees only 256 KB on a 512 KB SIMM.)

Sounds like you missed something on the upgrade. Also what monitor? You won't see extra resolution on fixed resolution monitors, only thousands and millions color option.

#2 Tue, 29 May 2007 - 01:06 PPCMLA

Since you know what a crash sounds like, and aren't hearing that, the most likely failure is somewhere in the read channel electronics. It could be intermittent/poor connections between the pc board and the head assembly contacts. Dunno how desperate you are, but if DW doesn't fix it for you (or makes things worse), you might try removing the drive's pc board, cleaning the contacts and reassembling. I've encountered problems similar to yours a couple of times, and this procedure fixed one (maybe two). In a couple of other cases, a transplant of the pc board fixed it. If you happen to have an identical donor drive (or can find one; a crashed one should be cheap), that might be worth a try, too, if you get desperate enough.

Good luck, and let us know how you make out.

#3 Tue, 29 May 2007 - 07:09 PPCMLA

#3 Tue, 16 Sep 2014 - 02:41 68kMLA

the monitor is a 15in multisync LCD with a adapter with switches. From the way that reads I guess that means I can only do upgrade the ram to 1MB using 2 simms or 2MB if I fill all the slots then. Silly me thinking I could have 1.5MB

#4 Fri, 6 Jul 2007 - 00:37 PPCMLA

#4 Tue, 16 Sep 2014 - 03:24 68kMLA

if your using the VGA mode of the adaptor its only going to do so much anyways… pretty much 800x600 you might have to play with the switches on the db15 2 vga adaptor.

#5 Fri, 6 Jul 2007 - 09:07 PPCMLA

Not well.

DiskWarrior failed to fix whatever problems I had. In fact, it counted upwards of 16000 disk errors! I think it did suffer a head crash after all. The drive was making a faint "ticking" sound which could have been the head skipping off the platter...

DW allowed us to recover some of the photographs we had stored on the drive, but we lost a good deal of everything else including all of my wife's archived email.

I picked up a FirmTek SeriTek 1S2 SATA controller and Maxtor III 300 GB SATA hard drive as a replacement. The drive and card seem fast enough, but now I'm having trouble installing OS X from my 10.4.6 DVD. I get about 2/3 of the way through and the installer gives up claiming "problems during the installation."

Man, when it rains, it pours.

Peace,
Drew
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#5 Tue, 16 Sep 2014 - 06:29 68kMLA

*The onboard video can support 512x384

640x480

832x624 at 8-bit

1152x870 at 4-bit

--- With 2 MB of VRAM installed, it can support up to 832x624 at 24-bit and 1152x870 at 8-bit.

So does this mean that you can get 1152x870x256 with only 512k Vram(stock ammount) in the Q700? if so that is kind of inpressive.

Oops, 4bit is only 16 colors. but that is still a large chunk of screen real-estate with only 512k ram.

But you said that you added (2) 256k simms, to give you a total one 1meg of vram.

and that gets you 1152x864@256

thats not too shabby for only one meg of vram.

and you said with 4 simms in there, gave you no change.

well that is probably because of you are at the colors limit of that resolution anyways. adding all 6 simms, just gives you a little more real-estate but still only @ 256 colors.

#6 Tue, 16 Sep 2014 - 22:31 68kMLA

Maybe its me getting old but with the way it ditters? higher color to the 256 color pallete it still looks pretty good. If you switch to grey scale at 8-bit there is no image change aside from color. something about a 8-bit grey image has the same depth as a 16-bit color one. And somehow I managed to get 1024x768 in my monitor control panel and its not even a listed resolution for the quadra

#6 Fri, 6 Jul 2007 - 15:12 PPCMLA

Just out of curiosity, did Disk Utility give you any complaints about the s.m.a.r.t. status of the drive? It might not be dead if Disk Utility didn't complaina bout that, but I don't know if powermac g4s can detect s.m.a.r.t. status.
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#7 Tue, 16 Sep 2014 - 23:51 68kMLA

Interesting!

#7 Fri, 6 Jul 2007 - 18:25 PPCMLA

DU did tell me that the drive was in trouble. I don't recall what the exact S.M.A.R.T. status was. At first, there didn't seem to be anything wrong per the SMART sensor, but after a few runs through DU and DiskWarrior, the thing definitely said it had trouble. I'm glad it was so predictive... Wink

Peace,
Drew
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#8 Sat, 7 Jul 2007 - 01:15 PPCMLA

I mainly ask because it seems like my iMac (though not PPC, I suppose) is predicting the death of its internal hard disc, and I've only had that drive since February. (though there's no telling how long it was circulating 'round before that, as the drive was a replacement from Apple.)

I'm not sure if it's a false death-prediction, or if it's actually going to die soo. I suppose I'll find out in the coming weeks. (I'm going to ring up Apple soon though, because I want to have them replace it.)

At any rate, never fun when a drive dies, especially if you haven't backed up the data on it. (SuperDuper = friend of Cory)
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#9 Sat, 7 Jul 2007 - 12:15 PPCMLA

#10 Sat, 7 Jul 2007 - 13:54 PPCMLA

all g4´s can.

#11 Sat, 7 Jul 2007 - 15:07 PPCMLA

All systems with the proper software can. It's a function of the capbility of the drive to have S.M.A.R.T. to begin with, and of the OS/drivers to read. It doesn't really matter so much as to the computer mobo/controller hardware as it's been a spec for drives. The controller can matter in some cases, such as USB/FW enclosures, though.

#12 Sun, 8 Jul 2007 - 17:39 PPCMLA

Good info that G3/G4 macs can read s.m.a.r.t. status, I hadn't checked on any of my systems before this, probably something that only makes itself important when a failure is imminent.

Well, my drive is definitely on its way out. After leaving the system off for a few days and then turning it back on today, it was evident I'd have to get it replaced. it's making crunching noises and generally acting like a failing hard disc, including still reporting failing s.m.a.r.t. status.

I'll call Apple tomorrow.
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#13 Sun, 8 Jul 2007 - 21:11 PPCMLA

Run, don't walk, to your nearest backup utility! Make a copy of that drive ASAP! If it's making "crunching" noises, it's only a matter of time before it is unusable and the data unrecoverable...

Peace,
Drew
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#14 Tue, 10 Jul 2007 - 17:44 PPCMLA

I'm booted from my backup now, Apple is sending somebody to replace the internal drive.

(only disadvantage of an iMac so far: not user-accessible)
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#15 Tue, 10 Jul 2007 - 23:39 PPCMLA

That's pretty cool. They are actually sending someone to you to replace the drive? Nice. For some reason, I thought AppleCare was a "carry it in" service.

Peace,
Drew
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#16 Fri, 17 Aug 2007 - 23:26 PPCMLA

Final Update: I never did get OS X 10.4 to install directly from the DVD. I ended up duplicating my Pismo's hard drive to the wife's Mac via Carbon Copy Cloner. For whatever reason, I just can't install 10.4 directly.

Has anybody else out there moved over to a SATA drive on their G4 yet? If so, are you having any trouble installing OS X?

Peace,
Drew
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