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PowerBook G4 12''-erratic behavior
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Brushton, New York (middle of nowhere)
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I recently acquired a PowerBook G4 12'' (the VGA 867MHz model) and it's been behaving a little strange. For beginners, the thing is a bit picky when it wants to load the OS or not, so I'm wondering if something's not plugged in right internally or something.
It hangs up, freezes at odd points when it does work, but does not lock up or spin into a kernel panic.
I'm hoping that it's a hard drive problem, but anyone suspect worse?
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The Mac Collection:
Power Mac G4 Sawtooth at 450MHz, Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet at 400MHz, three Power Mac FW800's at 1.0GHz, MacBook Pro at 2.0GHz, my late father's G3 iMac at 350MHz, an iMac at 500MHz, a PowerBook G4 (12-inch VGA) and a PowerBook 170
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Moderator Emeritus
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Wasilla, Alaska
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Certainly sounds like a drive issue. If you can boot if from an external source you could confirm that.
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Moderator  Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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You're not providing a lot of detail. What OS do you have? If it's 10.3 or later, you can check in Disk Utility if the HD is on the verge of giving up the ghost. Look for "SMART status".
In any case, I'd run the hardware test CD if you have it.
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The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Brushton, New York (middle of nowhere)
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Originally Posted by AKcrab 
Certainly sounds like a drive issue. If you can boot if from an external source you could confirm that.
I've partially confirmed that. The machine boots up much more stable when using an external drive (e.g. Target Disk Mode).
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The Mac Collection:
Power Mac G4 Sawtooth at 450MHz, Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet at 400MHz, three Power Mac FW800's at 1.0GHz, MacBook Pro at 2.0GHz, my late father's G3 iMac at 350MHz, an iMac at 500MHz, a PowerBook G4 (12-inch VGA) and a PowerBook 170
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Brushton, New York (middle of nowhere)
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Originally Posted by P
You're not providing a lot of detail. What OS do you have? If it's 10.3 or later, you can check in Disk Utility if the HD is on the verge of giving up the ghost. Look for "SMART status".
In any case, I'd run the hardware test CD if you have it.
1) I'm using 10.5.6, and I've used Disk Utility religiously on this, no, on all the 10.3+ Mac's in my house.
The SMART status came back Verified-so that's bothering me a little. And I'm mostly ruling out a logic board issue, (because the machine does not freeze (as in cursor won't move and the clock becomes paralyzed), but I've haven't ruled that out.
But the disk seems like the culprit. And I do want to replaced the hard drive netherless, because it's a 4200RPM hard drive on Leopard. I'd need a psych ward just to stay sane with that setup. The ram's maxed out on this machine (1.12GB), so I'm definitely suspecting it's the hard drive.
But I now need to get an external drive enclosure, because the internal DVD-R drive on this machine is kaputz. After installing Leopard, I ejected the Leopard DVD, but since then, it spits out any other CD or DVD I throw into the drive. So that rules out doing an AHT.
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Last edited by Northeastern292; Mar 8, 2009 at 09:01 PM.
Reason: Added details.)
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The Mac Collection:
Power Mac G4 Sawtooth at 450MHz, Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet at 400MHz, three Power Mac FW800's at 1.0GHz, MacBook Pro at 2.0GHz, my late father's G3 iMac at 350MHz, an iMac at 500MHz, a PowerBook G4 (12-inch VGA) and a PowerBook 170
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Moderator Emeritus
Join Date: Apr 2001
Location: Wasilla, Alaska
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Originally Posted by Northeastern292
I've partially confirmed that. The machine boots up much more stable when using an external drive (e.g. Target Disk Mode).
"Much more stable" or actually stable?
Don't trust SMART status..
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Moderator Join Date: Apr 2000
Location: Gothenburg, Sweden
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Have you checked Console for any clues what happens when the machine "almost" freezes?
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The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Brushton, New York (middle of nowhere)
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Originally Posted by P
Have you checked Console for any clues what happens when the machine "almost" freezes?
The Console hasn't given me too may clues into what happens when the machine "almost" freezes-but keep in mind that I've only had the machine since Saturday.
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The Mac Collection:
Power Mac G4 Sawtooth at 450MHz, Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet at 400MHz, three Power Mac FW800's at 1.0GHz, MacBook Pro at 2.0GHz, my late father's G3 iMac at 350MHz, an iMac at 500MHz, a PowerBook G4 (12-inch VGA) and a PowerBook 170
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Brushton, New York (middle of nowhere)
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And now this: while using an external hard drive, my internal hard drive disconnects. Just disconnects. So as I'm typing this from my MBP, my PowerBook is using my Power Mac's internal hard drive (via FireWire).
So, I am starting to suspect that the hard drive is indeed kaputz.
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The Mac Collection:
Power Mac G4 Sawtooth at 450MHz, Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet at 400MHz, three Power Mac FW800's at 1.0GHz, MacBook Pro at 2.0GHz, my late father's G3 iMac at 350MHz, an iMac at 500MHz, a PowerBook G4 (12-inch VGA) and a PowerBook 170
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Brushton, New York (middle of nowhere)
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Even the panic reporter does not lie...
Mon Mar 9 16:06:00 2009
panic(cpu 0 caller 0x00043F88): "zalloc: \"threads\" (180659 elements) retry fail 3"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1228.9.59/osfmk/kern/zalloc.c:769
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
Backtrace:
0x0009BCF0 0x0009C694 0x00029EA0 0x00043F88 0x0003D0F4 0x0003D4B8 0x0003D550 0x00334324
0x27D34C98 0x27D35E84 0x27D35F68 0x27D2B554 0x27D330F8 0x27D35574 0x27D353E4 0x0003F9BC
0x000B0E54
Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
com.apple.iokit.IOATABlockStorage(2.0.5)@0x27d2800 0->0x27d3afff
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOStorageFamily(1.5.5)@0x27ca9000
dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOATAFamily(2.0.0)@0x27666000
Proceeding back via exception chain:
Exception state (sv=0xbb3780)
PC=0x00000000; MSR=0x0000D030; DAR=0x00000000; DSISR=0x00000000; LR=0x00000000; R1=0x00000000; XCP=0x00000000 (Unknown)
BSD process name corresponding to current thread: kernel_task
Mac OS version:
9G55
Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 9.6.0: Mon Nov 24 17:39:01 PST 2008; root:xnu-1228.9.59~1/RELEASE_PPC
System model name: PowerBook6,1
The "IOStorageFamily" and "IOATAFamily" is giving me reason to believe the hard drive is indeed shot.
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The Mac Collection:
Power Mac G4 Sawtooth at 450MHz, Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet at 400MHz, three Power Mac FW800's at 1.0GHz, MacBook Pro at 2.0GHz, my late father's G3 iMac at 350MHz, an iMac at 500MHz, a PowerBook G4 (12-inch VGA) and a PowerBook 170
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Feb 2007
Location: Brushton, New York (middle of nowhere)
Status:
Offline
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UPDATE: 10:45PM EST
The PowerBook seems to be responding quite positively to a hard drive change. Will have a further update in the morning.
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The Mac Collection:
Power Mac G4 Sawtooth at 450MHz, Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet at 400MHz, three Power Mac FW800's at 1.0GHz, MacBook Pro at 2.0GHz, my late father's G3 iMac at 350MHz, an iMac at 500MHz, a PowerBook G4 (12-inch VGA) and a PowerBook 170
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