Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Walker · Jan 8, 2004, 09:31 AM

This is my high school daughter's system. Sonnet G4 500 upgraded (originally Rev. 1 G3 400) B/W powermac with 512 megs ram, 80 gb HD, Cendyne branded Pioneer DVD-R Burner (A04 I think). Operating system is Panther.

My daughter uses this system for a lot of video editing (Final cut Express). In particular, she's been working on a big project where the movie is over an our long. Pretty intensive stuff for an old PowerMac, I know.

Lately the computer has been acting up. Crashing mainly during video editing stuff. Finally after one crash, the restart resulted in a screen having a circle with a slash through it.

When I heard about this, I immediately thought of the old OS 9 days and the dreaded blinking question mark. So I got my trusty new version of Diskwarrior, and rebooted her machine starting up off of the CD. Here's where the spooky thing happened. After I had made it through most of the boot up screen (after agreeing to diskwarrior license, etc.) the computer all of a sudden rebooted...ALL BY ITSELF. It started over from scratch. And once again had the circle with the slash. So then I tried a little different approach. I completely shut down the machine (even unplugged it). Then I did another restart off the diskwarrior CD. This time it worked. Diskwarrior found some errors, repaired them, and I kept my fingers crossed that all the problems were over.

Well, the problems still exist. According to my daughter it first starts out as a crash, or rather a spinning rainbow circle that doesn't quit. So she pushes the restart button in front of the computer. Upon restart, all she gets is the circle with the slash. However, based on our previous experience, she learned that if she completely shuts down the machine, and then restarts it will boot up as normal.

This machine has been a stable unit for a lot of years. I was even considering slapping in the new 1 gh sonnet upgrade when it becomes available. Any ideas what is going wrong here? Is my daughter doing too intensive of work for an old machine like this?

Thanks,

lw

rphtechnology · Jan 8, 2004, 09:35 PM

It sounds like one or more system files are corrupt. The easiest way to fix this is to reinstall OS X. Restart your computer, put in the first install CD, hold C and follow the directions. Select 'Archive & Install' and make sure to pick preserve old users. This will do a clean install of the OS as well as backup your daughters and any other users files. Hope this helps!

Xtopolop · Jan 9, 2004, 04:53 AM

I also am having a problem with the circle w/ a line through it at bootup. The machine boots into OS9 just fine, but any incarnation of X (clean install or CD) dead ends with that damned sign!

There's a thread in the software forums... but no one seems to have any answers.

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=195785

rphtechnology · Jan 9, 2004, 12:23 PM

Have either one of you tried a reinstall of X?

goMac · Jan 9, 2004, 01:49 PM

Rev. 1 G3 have IDE controller issues with bigger IDE hard drives (bigger than 10 gigs). Try buying a Sonnet IDE controller. I had to do that.

Xtopolop · Jan 9, 2004, 04:33 PM

Originally posted by rphtechnology:
Have either one of you tried a reinstall of X?

Yep. The first thing I tried was removing the boot drive and doing a fresh install of X from another tower.

the weatherman · Jan 9, 2004, 04:55 PM

The "not allowed" sign is the same as the blinkig question mark of the old os 9 days.
it means that the machine has failed to detect the start-up disk. Shutting it down restores the connection. I also own a Blue and White and it really does this thing-loose connection to the start-up or any drive for that matter (depends on where your file is saved) after a hard crash and the only way to restore it is to sutdown and start fresh.
My drives are connected to a PCI controller so I don't think hat will really solve the issues one hundred percent.

Cadaver · Jan 9, 2004, 07:20 PM

This was also happening to my rev. 1 G3 with an 850MHz G3 module in it. It would run Jaguar just fine (off a 60GB HD), but would have various problems (crashing, kernel panic'ing, the "No" sign, etc).
These problems seem to have been completely solved after installing an A-Card ATA/133 PCI controller card and reinstalling Panther.
Can't say this is your issue, but my machine hasn't behaved strangely since.

Xtopolop · Jan 10, 2004, 05:06 AM

Originally posted by the weatherman:
The "not allowed" sign is the same as the blinkig question mark of the old os 9 days.
it means that the machine has failed to detect the start-up disk. Shutting it down restores the connection. I also own a Blue and White and it really does this thing-loose connection to the start-up or any drive for that matter (depends on where your file is saved) after a hard crash and the only way to restore it is to sutdown and start fresh.
My drives are connected to a PCI controller so I don't think hat will really solve the issues one hundred percent.

Ahh... so that's what the symbol means.

But regardless of how I try to boot into X, it gives me the same sign. It won't let me boot off a CD, or a clean install of X, even though the CDs/HD both boot up just fine in another tower.

the weatherman · Jan 11, 2004, 02:24 AM

Any new update? Not sure what the problem is. If you can't boot from a CD or an HD, you might have other hardware problems.

How about booting in OS 9, does it still work? If does not, have you tried resetting the pram, just to see if there will be changes. Resetting seems to fix a lot of issues even if sometimes it is really not related (or so we think?)

I guess the other recommendations would be a) check-out the ram by removing and reseating, (I know it doesn't seem related, but you can never realy rule them out without trying) and b) is to see if what happens if you return the original G3 processor.

The problem seems to be not the hard drive.

I love my Blue and White and it has served me really well. I feel for those people having issues with theirs. I am at present overhauling the look of my tower and upgrading a few parts.

Good Luck in the troubleshooting!

Walker · Jan 11, 2004, 11:54 AM

Thanks for all the suggestions. I got an email from a person who believes that I may be suffering from my G4 Sonnet processor overheating. I think this makes sense because I didn't use any thermal paste when I upgraded the processor in this computer. Honestly, I really didn't know what I was doing when I installed the upgrade. When I rebooted the computer and it started up, I thanked the Gods and went on my way. After doing some research, it appears quite a few Sonnet upgraders needed to use thermal paste to keep the G4 processors from getting too hot. Up until my daughter started taxing the processor with video editing, the computer was as stable as a rock.

I'll put in some thermal paste today and will post the results.

lw