[wlonh]

it's odd. everything was cool, but for the hell of it i ran DiskWarrior (started up from newly purchased CD from Alsoft at MWNY) to optimize directories and see if anything was amiss... it found a folder flag that needed repair, no big deal, so i let it fix and replace the rebuilt directories as usual and then i selected my iBook's HD as the startup disk and restarted and then the fun began...

got the flasher. put the DW CD back in and iBook 'took' it and started up from the CD. iBook HD was mounted, accessible, i then again selected the iBook HD as startup disk and restarted and immediately removed the CD. got the flasher again, so i put DW CD back in and started up... i ran DiskWarrior again, this time i concurrently used the DiskWrapper util that Alsoft has on the DW CD, and DW found no problems... so i tried to start to the iBook HD and got the flasher a g a i n...

then i put the MacOS 9.0 CD into the drive and it started up from that... used Drive Setup 1.9.2 (resident upon the iBook HD, heh) to update the HD driver and once again selected the iBook HD as startup disk and restarted AND it worked... once.
because as soon as i restarted again, i got the flasher y e t a g a i n...

i put the MacOS 9.0 CD back in the drive and it took it and then i ran the MacOS 9.04 Update (resident upon the still mounted and accessible iBook HD) from its mounted image and that appears to have fixed it... it does update the HD driver by default as part of the MacOS Update

btw, each time the driver was updated, upon restart i had a System Resources file in the trash

and the HD was always mounted and accessible, it just was not being recognized as a valid startup disk...

hmm seems ok now... funny how you can get bit, even by your fave util that has never given you a bit of grief (until now)

[This message has been edited by wlonh (edited 07-24-2000).]

[wlonh]

well, damn... it just now happened again... just about exactly 24 hours after the first episode... (wtf!)

i restarted (as a normal course of events after a day's use) my iBook and there was the flashing question mark, this time i did not hesitate... i put the MacOS 9.0 CD into the drive and it took it as a startup disk, then i once again applied the MacOS 9.04 Update (from its mounted image) to the iBook HD and all is well, that is, until it happens again

have not lost any data, the iBook HD was mounted and accessible when the CD was the active System Folder... i guess it is time to reinit (zero data) and reinstall

[wlonh]

yuck.
happened again, put the trusty MacOS 9.0 CD in the drive and it 'took' and this time i did some investigating... fired up DFA (on the CD) and it showed the RAM Disk i use for SETI as unnamed and i thought that curious, so i told DFA to have a gander at said RAM disk... DFA said it could not check the RAM disk so i immediately reapplied the MacOS 9.04 update again (but did not allow it to update the HD driver) and i checked that the iBook's HD was still selected as startup disk and it was, restarted no problem and immediately trashed the Persistent RAM Disk pref's file and restarted... obviously i am thinking that somehow the RAM Disk is implicated, if not the cause, of this flashing question mark issue...

which raises my doubts about NewWorld ROM (MacOS ROM and Boot ROM) and Open (beta, sez me) Firmware yet again... i tell you, something is just not right with this NewWorld (also beta, sez me) ROM thing and i suspect it to be at the root of so many issues people are experiencing...

argh! phooey! feh! glad i still have my trusty beige G3 rev2 minitower... i ain't buying no new G4 until OS X i tellya! but i will put a 500MHz G4 ZIF in my trusty beige soon woohoo

[This message has been edited by wlonh (edited 07-31-2000).]

[reader50]

If it happens again, I would suggest looking at the iBook's system folder, and see if it is still blessed.

The iBook will refuse to boot from a drive if it thinks there is no system software, or invalid system software on the drive. It sounds like the driver and directory structure are fine, you get normal access after booting from the CD. That leaves the system software. A reinstall might fix it for good.

Another possibility would be a new virus. I seem to recall that at Tokyo/March 2000, someone (Adobe?) handed out a sampler CD, complete with virus. Alsoft may have let something slip past.

Am not sure from your post if you know this, but DFA normally can check the RAM disk. I just tried it to make sure, no problems. Something was really wrong there. Hope you did not lose a WU.

Nothing much else comes to mind.

Just for grins, if it happens again, let the machine sit for about 3-5 minutes with the blinker. If it starts booting during that, throw away the startup disk prefrences, and make sure netboot isn't selected.

Sometimes, the machine thinks it is trying an internal drive, but is really trying a netboot (discovered accidentally one day). This gives a different result than having network disk selected in startup disk (no cursor or icon in screen for a minute or two).

Now for the bad news - I had one machine do this until I gave up and re-initialized the drive, then restored the files. But that did fix it.....so far.

[wlonh]

well thanks folks... but nope and nope to both suggestions, that is: Sys Folder was blessed, and secondly the iBook would not boot, period, i tried letting it go to see if it would... nope...

and i did try all those other co-suggestions way back when to no avail (only thing that worked was reinstalling MacOS 9.04 Update which is so quick in execution of install) BUT it has not done that jive since the last time i posted on this issue... nice of it to behave, eh? and it performed perfectly on the road, from which i just got home... ah! NYC...