[wlonh]

Imho, the iBook does not_even_like MacOS 8.6.
I've been working with/on a friend's iBook for about two weeks now (since he got it).
The first week it was great... the second week it went WAY SOUTH. HD disappeared, DisKWarrior could not completely fix it, neither could NUM 4.0.4, nor could DFA.

AND reintializing and reinstalling (not clean installing) did not help. MDB errors abounded... etc.

I just put MacOS 9 on that iBook and it is a DREAM, the difference is night and day... I loaded it up with Photoshop 5.5 and GoLive 4.0.1 and they loved MacOS 9...

I suggest that you upgrade ASAP to OS 9 if you own an iBook... unless OS 9 'breaks' some mission critical software on your iBook that you know of. Ditto new iMacs... RUN do not walk and get OS 9.

[fmalloy]

Hmmm. I've had two iBooks (mine and GF's) since Sept. 27 and haven't had any issues with 8.6. I guess we're lucky - no sleep problems, no other problems. We haven't been using them very heavily, though.

I did install OS 9 on my iBook and agree it also works just fine. I'll be installing it on her iBook as well.

Frank

To the top with this topic.

Any further reports on OS9 installed on iBooks? I've yet to take Apple up on their MacOS Uptodate offer.

Shogun

I�ve been running my iBook on OS 9 for the last couple of weeks. Today, I walked into the room to find my iBook locked up. I rebooted, and received a flashing floppy disk icon.

In my experience, this usually means a corrupted Finder, or that the Finder preferences have been damaged. I booted from the OS 9 CD, and replaced the Finder. No luck. But when I replaced the Finder preferences, the iBook booted again, and all was normal.

I�m not certain that I�d attribute a missing hard disk to an iBook�s dislike of 8.6; you can just as easily lose your hard drive under any version of the Mac OS, but most of the time it�s easy enough to fix, unless the disk has physically failed.

[fmalloy]

It seems strange that a corrupted finder would cause a flashing disk. The finder doesn't load until everything else does (extensions, etc.). A corrupt *System* file, I would believe...

Frank

[wlonh]

quant... vas you dere?? (where you there?)

MacOS 8.6 was COMPLETELY unusable on that iMac, very suddenly and out of the BLUE...

nothing was installed to possibly precipitate this failure of 8.6 on the iBook... it just went SOUTH BIGTIME... and NOTHING could make it work correctly, NOTHING, including wiping HD and reinsatlling 8.6... NO utilities app could find a problem... In all my years of working on computers, I have not seen ANYTHING EXACTLY like it... I said EXACTLY like it.

And when it got fed the lovely and talented MacOS 9, that iBook sat up and barked, then fetched the paper!! It is running around the house wagging its tail now... and jumping through hoops of real fire. Like it should.

[drewman]

It sounds like Open Firmware code got corrupted and it couldn't properly intialize the hard drive paramters.

From what I understand, when you load MacOS 9, it programs the latest code into Open Firmware which may have helped fixed the problem.

drewman

[wlonh]

yeah most likely so, i guess it's part of the relative newness of this 'NewWorld ROM' deal started with iMacs... bootROM and MacOS ROM, residing in two different places, MacOS ROM in RAM and bootROM in onboard ROMchip...

Apple: "Open Firmware is the process that controls the microprocessor after hardware initialization and diagnostics are performed, but before the main Operating System is passed control. It is responsible, among other things, for building the device tree and probing the expansion slots for I/O devices. Open Firmware queries PCI devices for its address space needs and dynamically assigns this space to each device. It is during this probing process that each device and motherboard ASIC is given a node in the device tree." http://developer.apple.com/technotes/tn/tn1061.html

so yes, must have been the problem: Open not-so-Firmware got blitzed on that iBook.

now i wanna know why... haha. Right.

Further FYI: that iBook running MacOS 8.6+ was repeatedly 'fixed' by the usual suspects, Norton Disk Doctor 4.0.4 and DiskWarrior 1.0.4 (1.1 is available now), and there were no 'Bad Blocks' on the HD but MDB errors abounded, etc... and each time the HD was 'fixed' it would become hosed again (freeze and/or bomb) upon restart or shortly after reaching the desktop. And each time, the HD would disappear at the next restart. And so on, for a period of a day or so (thankfully the iBook was not bought as a mission-critical device) until MacOS 9 was installed which loaded new open firmware, that iBook is (believe it or not) glitch-free now.

[This message has been edited by wlonh (edited 11-13-1999).]

[appledude83]

Yeah for real, go for OS X, don't worry about the good old days.

[mac-at-kearsarge]

uh Chris, Buddy, Pal. May I suggest that you not suggest using 10.2 on a system that was having issues 3 years ago! Furthermore, If my memory serves me correctly. The preview release of OS X hadn't even been released yet! Besides I wouldn't be surprised if wlohn has a whole new computer system by now!

[Gul Banana]

Surely you noticed that this thread is three years old?

[proux]

Why would you read 3 year old posts?
Some people have too much time on their hands...

[fisherKing]

Originally posted by proux:
Why would you read 3 year old posts?
Some people have too much time on their hands...

say, like the time to read a 3year old post & respond to it???



oops...

[gumby5647]

Ahhhhh good old wlonh.....him and Ca$h were the bestest of buddies

[JoNoiD]

lol
that was great.

[Nile]

Ha! I get laugh out of this!