[Link]

Relating to a discussion on Apple's site, there's a lot of reports that SP 1.8ghz G5s have problems with the power management and OS X 10.3/10.4.

The symptons are... displays going to sleep (and then not waking up), the machine refusing to sleep and then beachballing, or crashing when waking up, or refusing to wake the display from display sleep, or refusing to put the display INTO display sleep.

It seems to be entirely a motherboard issue, as there are posts showing that many SP 1.8 owners have both Nvidia and ATI cards... and the board differs from the other G5 boards in that it's a smaller board with 4 vertical ram slots and there's not a PMU, it's got what they call an SMU -- System Management Unit that doesn't have a reset button (but apparently "resets" after being unplugged for 30 seconds -- not sure on this) -- it also has a quarter-shaped battery instead of the typic battery Apple uses on their computers.

Anyway, that's the type of board these problems seem to appear on -- unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a hardware or software fix for it yet, and yeah I'm pretty sure it's the reason the 1.8SP was dumped from the product line if anything... but if you have the problems, be sure to drop a word about it!

On a slightly unrelated note -- do any G5 owners have problems with the digital output constantly getting switched back to analog? On our g5 we have it set to play to our speaker setup (hooked up over optical) -- and every time we restart it or shut it down, it changes back to analog on the next boot... Along with that though, when in analog it STILL sends a signal over digital...

Could that just be an SP 1.8 issue as well?

[spacefreak]

I finally converted a friend and his wife to Apple last year, and the machine they got was a single 1.8 GHz G5.

They experience this all the time, and I've often felt bad that they experienced these problems.

I'll go over to the discussion forums. I hope that if there is a problem, that Apple is planning a fix of some sorts.

[Link]

Aww sorry to hear that! Geez, that's gotta suck

From what I can tell, someone noted that "apple engineers are working with me on it" -- but that might mean something, and it might mean not much.. I'm hoping a firmware update will fix it though..

The apple discussion is here: http://discussions.info.apple.com/[email protected]/743 -- apparently someone went through all 700 or so posts and found at least 60 complaints for the SP 1.8 itself, which seems to have the problem while the others don't usually..

Good luck! This g5 was my mom's first mac too -- and it sucks that it plays up on her that much, but I'm sure there will be a fix soon

[discotronic]

Since updating to 10.4.2 I have had a few Finder crashes and the system does have some weird sleep related issues. Also, iTunes seems to lock up when coming out of the visualizer.

I don't know if these issues are related to my SP 1.8GHz PM or if they are just bugs with the OS. I can't seem to replicate any of the events when I want to. Also, it doesn't seem as if it is a heat issue.

[Don Pickett]

The only issue I'm having is a freeze when using applications which are full screen, as in there's no menu bar. For me, this means games. If I run the games in a window, no problems. As the machine had over 40 days of uptime when I upgraded to 10.4, it's definitely a software thing for me.

Waiting to see what Apple does about it. . .

[G0Ducks]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett

The only issue I'm having is a freeze when using applications which are full screen, as in there's no menu bar. For me, this means games. If I run the games in a window, no problems. As the machine had over 40 days of uptime when I upgraded to 10.4, it's definitely a software thing for me.

Waiting to see what Apple does about it. . .

This also happens to me. Is this a Tiger only issue? If so I will go right back to panther in a heart beat (This is what my Univercity computing center people tell me I should do too. They are "Apple Certified". The University helpline for apple also suggested this.)


So sad

R

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by G0Ducks

This also happens to me. Is this a Tiger only issue? If so I will go right back to panther in a heart beat (This is what my Univercity computing center people tell me I should do too. They are "Apple Certified". The University helpline for apple also suggested this.)


So sad

R

I never had a problem in Panther. That's where the 40 days of uptime came from.

[G0Ducks]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett

I never had a problem in Panther. That's where the 40 days of uptime came from.

Well, I have everything I need backed up to my iPod... I know what I'm doing this weekend

R

[jofallon]

When I was running 10.3, the machine would usually take a long time to shutdown or reboot, and would not sleep reliably. Upgrading to Tiger cured that. Now the machine will freeze while doing a full-screen slide-show, or full screen game, if used for 2 hours or so. I can ssh to the machine and restart it; usually I can force a restart from the keyboard also. But the GUI stops working. If I wait another 2 hours or so, the GUI starts responding normally again. I bought one of the new iBooks last week, and all these things work just fine on that machine.

I've reported it on the developer connection site. Applecare recommends an archive and install to try to fix it, but so far I haven't had the time. I installed tiger initially with an erase and install; then ran the migration assistant.

Since this GUI freeze wasn't a problem with Panther, there may be some hope for a fix in Tiger, eventually. The problem is easy to reproduce reliably. Apple officially has not heard of any issues with this machine, although clearly some support people are working on fixes.

[G0Ducks]

Well, I have gone back to panther... Things are totally smooth again. I really hope that they fix the issues, I really miss all the new features. 'sides, Im one of those that likes to be at the bleading edge of my os...

Thanks for the reply.

R

[discotronic]

Mine has started going crazy. It is getting worse than what it was in my first post. Out of nowhere the fans go wide open and the GUI freezes. I am sure that going from 10.4.1 to 10.4.2 did it. I have 2 hard drives so I am going to install 10.4.1 on the second one and use it for a couple days. If this doesn't cure it I will go back to Panther and wait until the bugs with Tiger are ironed out.

I ran the Hardware Test, ran cron scripts, repaired permissions and what not. Everything on that end seems to be fine.

[discotronic]

I installed 10.4.1 on my second hard drive. When I put the system to sleep the fans start going wide open still. This will happen every single time I put the system to sleep. I just keeps getting worse and I am at a loss as what to do about it.

Also, my better half has a first gen iPod mini. It won't charge when hooked up to the computer. It does just fine on my PC, wall charger and car charger. Also, my printer stops working and I have to reseat the USB cable for it to work properly.

Any suggestions?

[Thorne^]

Hello

I'm from Germany and have the freeze problem with the PM 1.8 SP (late 2004).
One of the concerned customers made a Website about the problems.

Didnt see this thread here, that's why i posted some informations there:
http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.php?t=265768

By the way, the GUI freezing occurs also, if you load a Website with Quicktime content,
after a uptime of 2 hours or more.


You forgot the freezing in the Vote option, therefore i choosed "Other issues".

[Link]

So the monitor on my mom's g5 was on for a few minutes, and I got bored and went over and decided to play with it!

First I checked the machine, all seemed well, so I hit the power button a few times to see if it'd sleep...

Nope.

I hold down the power button on the g5

*grin*

The light on the g5 goes off, same with the internal light. The machine, however.. stays on!

AHA!

I open up console, this better be good! And it is!

Aug 8 22:34:35-power-mac-g5 kernel[0]: AppleSMU waiting over 2 sec for reply AGAIN! !cmd = 0x65, length = 0x09
Aug 8 22:34:35-power-mac-g5 kernel[0]: AppleSMUsendMISC: FAILURE -- TIMEOUT EXCEEDED on GPIO !
Aug 8 22:34:35-power-mac-g5 kernel[0]: AppleSMU COMM ERROR - RETRYING AGAIN WITH IODELAYS...

JACKPOT!

That sucker flooded the whole time I was using the machine, it looked like it dumped into safe mode.

I can recreate this hella easy, the problem is the "SMU" has to "fail" for me to do it, and that can take a while.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by Link

Aug 8 22:34:35-power-mac-g5 kernel[0]: AppleSMU waiting over 2 sec for reply AGAIN! !cmd = 0x65, length = 0x09
Aug 8 22:34:35-power-mac-g5 kernel[0]: AppleSMUsendMISC: FAILURE -- TIMEOUT EXCEEDED on GPIO !
Aug 8 22:34:35-power-mac-g5 kernel[0]: AppleSMU COMM ERROR - RETRYING AGAIN WITH IODELAYS....

I've seen the same error.

[Link]

Then I suppose Apple is really aware of it by now lol.

We just know this is why they dropped the single processor machine off the line lol.

[jofallon]

Apple discontinued the 900 Mhz bus SP G5 pretty quickly also; I don't think it had this sort of problem. Possibly they don't think having one machine with a unique motherboard is a good idea, or makes it harder to design and support.

Once only with Tiger I had trouble shutting down. I use verbose startup and shutdown, and there was a string of SMU errors on the screen. The power light was actually off, and the machine was still putting error messages on the display.

[jofallon]

Apple discontinued the 900 Mhz bus SP G5 pretty quickly also; I don't think it had this sort of problem. Possibly they don't think having one machine with a unique motherboard is a good idea, or makes it harder to design and support.

Once only with Tiger I had trouble shutting down. I use verbose startup and shutdown, and there was a string of SMU errors on the screen. The power light was actually off, and the machine was still putting error messages on the display.

[Thorne^]

Reminder

Don't forget to add yourself to the list of the flawed G5 1.8 SP owners, it will show, we are many affected users.

[G0Ducks]

Uhhh... which list is that? Link Please.

R

[G0Ducks]

For those who can read spanish This is funny... It's NOT just us people... This is an international affair. FIX THE FREEZING APPLE!

http://www.osxfacile.com/bug.html

R

[discotronic]

Originally Posted by G0Ducks

For those who can read spanish This is funny... It's NOT just us people... This is an international affair. FIX THE FREEZING APPLE!

http://www.osxfacile.com/bug.html

R

Here is the page translated using Yahoo. I couldn't get Google to do it.

http://66.218.71.231/language/transl...r=FP-tab-web-t

[Thorne^]

Originally Posted by G0Ducks

Uhhh... which list is that? Link Please.

R

http://www.g5freeze.com/page4/page4.html

[Link]

*informative update*

Yesterday I got a bit upset with the progress of this whole thing (the "we're working on it" attitude and no real formal response), so I beamed an email off to the good ole sjobs@apple address (which if you've gotten responses from before, you'd know goes to a mailing list the whole exec relations group gets)...

This morning I got a call from someone quite nice at apple, they told me that they will be talking with the hardware engineers about it (I gave them all the info I could find on the topic), and that they'd update me on the progress of it.

However, I also have a contact for this now, so if I don't have any more info within 2-3 weeks, we'll be able to find out where it's going still

Let's hope this leads to something positive this time, I can only hope the SMU fix is an easy one

[G0Ducks]

wow... I really hope this means something... I really really really want my pet Tiger back!!!!

R

[Don Pickett]

Very interesting post at g5support.com:

Okay, i have done extensive study on this matter.

I have concluded after months of research that this problem is because of the AGP 8X "Pro" Slot.

No other Mac uses this slot, maybe older G5's but they have a PMU not SMU

Anyways, what i think is the current SMU somehow goes awol when card requests certain code, and this is because Tiger's changed API & Acceleration optimations that require obivously more power to the actual card, and AGP 8X pro differs from normal 8X AGP slot by having an integrated power connector meaning this problem could be solved using a typical 8X AGP card with external power (molex) to the card

Since the nature of this problem, everything suggests its the SMU that doesnt like the 8X Pro socket, for some odd reason in Tiger.

I think it could be either the fact it has CoreImage, that uses the card more and thus eats more power, when switching to fullscreen it requires even more power or gives a command where in a bug in the Tiger causes SMU to freeze AGP 8X Pro slot.

iMac G5 have a typical 8X slot thus there are no problems. Older G5's have a diffrent kind of PMU/SMU thus no problems there either.

Basically adding iMac G5 SMU/Logic board with AGP 8X Pro was bad idea, atleast they didnt test it completely, there could be even powerrequirements that our machines arent meeting now because of Tigers increased power usage.

[G0Ducks]

If this is true... that means that either Apple is going to have to fix Tiger or give me a new compy right? I bet they fix Tiger

R

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by G0Ducks

If this is true... that means that either Apple is going to have to fix Tiger or give me a new compy right? I bet they fix Tiger

R

Obviously, it's better for them if they fix Tiger.

Several people on the Apple discussions board have had their single 1.8s replaced with dual 2.0s. I am giving Apple until 10.4.3 to fix the problem, and then I am going to start that process.

[G0Ducks]

Hrm. I was thinking the same thing... waiting until 10.4.3. If this isn't fixed by then, I too will begin the process.
What is the "process" anyway. How would one begin to get apple to deal with this?

R

[Todd Madson]

Interesting supposition from g5support.com however:

http://www.apple.com/powermac/ currently indicates that all PowerMac G5
computers "The Power Mac G5 comes with a graphics card installed in an
AGP 8X Pro slot for a maximum bandwidth of 2.1GB per second."

So, ALL G5 PowerMac machines have an AGP 8X Pro slot in them.

[Link]

Yes, but all the other PowerMacs use a PMU. It could be that the SMU was never programmed to support the AGP 8x pro slot and well, yeah.. that's where the problem is.

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by Link

Yes, but all the other PowerMacs use a PMU. It could be that the SMU was never programmed to support the AGP 8x pro slot and well, yeah.. that's where the problem is.

Someone mind telling me the difference between PMU and SMU?

[Thorne^]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett

Someone mind telling me the difference between PMU and SMU?

Hello Don

The SMU (System Management Unit) is a microcontroller chip on the logic board that controls all power functions for your computer. If your computer is experiencing any issues regarding these functions, resetting the SMU may resolve the issue. The functions controlled by the SMU include:
• It tells the computer when to turn on, turn off, sleep, wake, idle, and so on.
• It handles system resets from various commands.
• It controls the fan.

The Power Management Unit (PMU) is an integrated circuit (computer chip) on the logic board and does the same as the SMU.

The Difference:

In case a PMU reset is needed, the user has to open the Power Mac and push one time the PMU_Reset Button on the logic board.

For a SMU-Reset the Power Mac stays closed, you turn the Mac off, unplug the power cord, wait 15 seconds and plug in the power cord.

[seanc]

If the AGP slot is suspected to be the problem, has anyone had the chance to try a PCI graphics card?

[Don Pickett]

Originally Posted by Thorne^

Hello Don

The SMU (System Management Unit) is a microcontroller chip on the logic board that controls all power functions for your computer. If your computer is experiencing any issues regarding these functions, resetting the SMU may resolve the issue. The functions controlled by the SMU include:
• It tells the computer when to turn on, turn off, sleep, wake, idle, and so on.
• It handles system resets from various commands.
• It controls the fan.

The Power Management Unit (PMU) is an integrated circuit (computer chip) on the logic board and does the same as the SMU.

The Difference:

In case a PMU reset is needed, the user has to open the Power Mac and push one time the PMU_Reset Button on the logic board.

For a SMU-Reset the Power Mac stays closed, you turn the Mac off, unplug the power cord, wait 15 seconds and plug in the power cord.

Thanks. I do not have the technical knowledge to know whether or not this is something Apple can fix in the software/firmware. I hope it is, because I don't want to have to force them to give me a new machine.

[G0Ducks]

So, you think I should try this? It would mean re-installing Tiger, but if it works, then wahOoO!

R

Originally Posted by Thorne^

Hello Don

The SMU (System Management Unit) is a microcontroller chip on the logic board that controls all power functions for your computer. If your computer is experiencing any issues regarding these functions, resetting the SMU may resolve the issue. The functions controlled by the SMU include:
• It tells the computer when to turn on, turn off, sleep, wake, idle, and so on.
• It handles system resets from various commands.
• It controls the fan.

The Power Management Unit (PMU) is an integrated circuit (computer chip) on the logic board and does the same as the SMU.

The Difference:

In case a PMU reset is needed, the user has to open the Power Mac and push one time the PMU_Reset Button on the logic board.

For a SMU-Reset the Power Mac stays closed, you turn the Mac off, unplug the power cord, wait 15 seconds and plug in the power cord.

[Link]

Originally Posted by Don Pickett

Thanks. I do not have the technical knowledge to know whether or not this is something Apple can fix in the software/firmware. I hope it is, because I don't want to have to force them to give me a new machine.

Resetting this doesn't do much though.. personally I don't care if they have to switch the machine, as long as the replacement doesn't have the problem

[discotronic]

Originally Posted by G0Ducks

So, you think I should try this? It would mean re-installing Tiger, but if it works, then wahOoO!

R

Reinstalling didn't work for me.

[Link]

lol, as said, I have the problems with panther too, to an extent.

[discotronic]

Originally Posted by seanc

If the AGP slot is suspected to be the problem, has anyone had the chance to try a PCI graphics card?

I had a Radeon 9200 PCI recently. I wish I would have noticed these problems then. I would have tested the card to see what kind of results I could get. It would seem to me that if the AGP slot is bad there would have to be a hardware fix for the problem. I don't see where a firmware update would solve it.

[spacefreak]

Originally Posted by Link

lol, as said, I have the problems with panther too, to an extent.

Yeah, what's the excuse/reasoning for the G5 freezeboxes that experience the problems in Panther?

[G0Ducks]

Hrm... no mention of any fix in the latest ThinkSecret logs for the 10.4.3 seed Oh well. Looks like we are going to be left in the proverbial dust...

R

[Link]

*shrug* I'll be calling to check the status on what's going on, on Monday Hopefully we'll hear more by then, because I'm not going to let it rest.

[G0Ducks]

really... I'm just scared of the rigamoroll that I know I will have to go through to get this fixed
I don't need my computer giving me an ulcer...

R