[raynman]

I have a very strange situation in a powerbook G4 (1.67ghz, hi-res 15" screen).

I bought the laptop non-working, installed a new power board (plug on old one was fried!) Installed a 250gb HD which I had installed OSX on in another G4 laptop, and it booted up fine, or so I thought.

When I put in my Leopard install DVD to install over the existing 10.4 Tiger, the disc spun up, but would not mount - would not eject - and when I checked the System Profiler the superdrive was not recognized by the powerbook as being present on the ATA bus. The hard drive, of course, was seen on the ATA bus.

I thought the superdrive was bum, so I installed a known-working combo drive I had around from a previously parted laptop (Apple branded) and experienced EXACTLY the same situation.

Other things I have tried included using jumpers to manually set the hard drive to slave and cable select (from the factory, with no jumpers, it is set to master), thinking that perhaps the optical drive was somehow seen as master or cable select. All possible jumper settings I tried made no difference.

Booting from external firewire hard drive shows exactly the same situation on the ATA bus, EXCEPT (and this is where it gets just weird enough to pique my curiosity and keep me trying to fix it) - When I boot from the external drive WITHOUT AN INTERNAL DRIVE installed, the SUPERDRIVE SHOWS UP ON THE ATA BUS of the System Profiler! I have not yet seen both at the same time, but I can get one or the other to show, depending on, apparently, the presence of the internal hard drive.

Am I missing something here, or am I to assume a fault in the IDE controller of the logic board?

I have never seen this laptop working properly, but the seller I acquired it from stated that the optical drive worked fine until he fried the DC in-board, presumably with a faulty power supply. He had removed his hard drive to save the data on it.

Thanks for any help or clues that anyone might provide.


Ray

[raynman]

Well, I am happy to report that the situation is resolved with my powerbook not seeing the superdrive, but I still do not really understand exactly why it was unavailable in the system profiler as I originally posted.

I literally had this thing apart and half-together DOZENS of times checking different parts, and exchanging pieces, and checking possibilities, and it finally turns out to have NO hardware fault!

My particular solution was to wipe out (erase) the hard drive, zapped PMU, zapped PRAM, did the reset-nvram in open firmware, rechecked to make CERTAIN the proper cables were installed properly, and Now It Works! I just completed a fresh install of Leopard from the previously recalcitrant superdrive, to the just-cleaned hard drive.

My BEST GUESS as to what was wrong with the situation from the outset may have had something to do with where the hard drive came from and how that operating system was installed. (the OS was on the HD when I installed it) In hindsight, perhaps doing all the resets, as well as repairing permissions MIGHT have done it, but I got caught up in thinking it might be cables or something.

So, I would advise others with a similar problem to:

repair the hard drive

repair permissions on the hard drive

reset PMU

reset PRAM

boot to open firmware (hold command-option-o-f at boot) and type "reset-nvram" (without quotes) enter, the type "set-default" enter, then type "reset-all" enter

cross your fingers, knock on wood, and boot! See what happens....

if no glory, THEN look at cables (make certain they are the CORRECT cables and that they are seated properly) I bought a hard drive cable and an optical cable from ebay sellers with assurance that they were the proper cables, and NEITHER had the same part number as the original cable which I suspected faulty, and that in the end are actually GOOD! GO BY PART NUMBERS! do not accept someone elses assurance that their cable is the proper one!

then suspect faulty optical drive - if possible swap another drive in and check.

if a second optical fails, then SUSPECT logicboard, but before you invest in a new logic board ($$$$$) try putting a freshly erased HD in and just see if that helps.

good luck to you all with your mac troubleshooting!

and thanks to all who read my post and pondered possible solutions...

I am very relieved that the fault did not lie in any of the major components (or even the minor ones for that matter)

It turned out to be only software/installation/settings, even though the symptoms certainly seemed to point to a hardware issue. It pays to try the resets and repairs!


Ray

[raynman]

I just wanted to post some more information publicly from a private message that I received from a forum member.

He had to acquire a replacement HD and cable for his 1.67ghz powerbook, and had exactly the same situation with the superdrive not being recognized as long as the HD was attached.

He found resolution by placing a jumper on the hard drive - "new hdd was set to device#0, i set it to device#1, and now it runs smoothly with superdrive and hdd at the same time"

I replied as follows:

<quoted text>
Glad to hear that you seem to have resolved your similar situation. I wonder if you have an "almost correct" hard drive cable. I had tried "jumpering" my HD without success, but I had not done all the resets at that time, so maybe the jumper would have worked if I had done all the resets, etc. at the same time?

I also wonder if the "almost correct" cable is the source of the need to jumper the drive? Perhaps the CORRECT cable, when installed, acts to "cable select" the drive.

I know you don't want to tear into a working computer, but if you have to go inside the powerbook again, check the hard drive cable number (VERY small print!).

The one that worked for me had numbers:
821-0391-A and
632-0356-A
with a "copyright" date of 2005.

the cable I tried that DID NOT work was labeled:
821-0550-A and
632-0282-A
with a "copyright" date of 2003 (duh! should have been a clue! as the 1.67 was built in 2005!)

anyway, glad it worked for you, whatever it was.
<end quoted text>

So, it appears that this situation CAN be resolved, so take heart if you find this thread through Google in search of a solution. What seems to be a hardware problem is NOT always as it appears!

I, myself, do not know exactly what "switch" I threw that made the difference, but it is apparent that is a simple device conflict, which seems resolvable by either using the correct cable or providing the proper "jumper" for the hard drive, AS WELL AS performing all the requisite resets (PMU, PRAM, NVRAM) can bring things back to proper functioning. And I would check and repair hard drive permissions and possibly Verify and Repair the hard drive in disk utility as well.

Good luck all!


Ray