Frozen Powermac 8500....Help!!!

[macguy]

As my Powermac 8500 with PT's 4.3 loaded on it boots up, it frezzes at the MAC OS 8.6 logo. I do get a happy mac face before this.
It stays on the MAC OS 8.6 logo and will not continue. Anyone had this happen? Any suggestions?

Thanks

macguy

[doug sjostrom]

1st try zapping the pram. As soon as you power the machine hold down the apple and option key. You will see the mac power cycle, let it do this 2 times then let go of the keys. and let it tryt to boot. If you still have a hang then try booting w/ the shift key held down. This will turn off all extensions on boot. See what happens. If it boots then you have an ext. conflict. You will then have to figure out what is causing the problem.

Good luck
DS

[Avid]

Might be your battery. If it is the original battery, it probably needs to be replaced by now anyway. Should be @ $10 from Radio Shack or a computer store.

Zapping the PRAM and Rebuilding the Desktop commands are easier and a bit more functional using the free TechTool utility from www.micromat.com

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Bruce Paine
Digidesign

[macguy]

Doug..Thanks for the help. The system would not boot up with either options.

Bruce...where is the battery located in a Power Mac 8500?

Appriciate the assistance.

macguy

[James Henke]

You have an extension conflict, startup holding down the shift key untill you see-extensions disabled or off or whatever it is that it says on the screen, then go in and get rid of whatever you put on just before it strarted hanging up on you at strartup.
Second option, startup, hold down the C key withthe apple system disk in the cd drive. This will startup form the CD rom.
One word of advice- try Installer observer ( a shareware program) to track the stae of your system before running game or demo installers. If it aint broke dont fix it.

[macguy]

I tried all of the very good suggestions above. No dice!! Maybe a new battery would do the trick. Where exactly on the Power Mac 8500 is the battery located?

Thanks

macguy

[This message has been edited by macguy (edited December 17, 2000).]

[Avid]

If it's not an extension conflict, and you still can't boot up with the shift key held down, then it could be a SCSI conflict. I went through a period of time where I had to disconnect my internal zip drive on my 8600 in order to boot at all. (I also have 3 internal hard drives on that machine, so my scsi chain is pretty goofy)

With the power off, try removing devices from the SCSI chain. Remove the ribbon cable that plugs into the back of your CD Rom drive, zip drive, extra hard drives, etc. and leave just your system drive hooked up. If you are able to start up that way, then you probably have a scsi conflict. Let us know if that is the case, and we can proceed from there with possible solutions. I have some...uh...unsupported tricks that I used to get all of my scsi devices to eventually work together. Sort of the equivalent of banging on the back of the TV until the picture gets clear.

The more I thought about it, the more I doubt that it is just the battery causing your problem. A dead battery should still allow you to boot, but would not display the correct date or time or retain PRAM information like Appletalk settings. The battery, by the way, is inside on the motherboard. It should be about 1/2 to 3/4 inch long. I think my battery is purple, but I don't remember if it is the original. There also may be a plastic cover on it that pops off. I'm sure if you open the machine up you'll be able to find it. (I looked on the Apple site for you, but was unable to find any pictures)

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Bruce Paine
Digidesign

[macguy]

Bruce,

I tried the other suggestions you had and still no luck on booting the system up. I do have a question regarding the d24 and adaptec card. I removed them to put them in a new G4. Then I realized I needed to deauthorize PT's from the Power Mac. Would removing the cards but still have PT's and FWB software and Masterlist CD software loaded cause the sytem to not want to boot up?

Thanks for the assistance

macguy

[Avid]

When you say having them loaded, I would assume that means enabled in the extensions set. If you can't boot with the extensions off, the Digi software wouldn't be the problem. Even having the Digi extensions load without the hardware shouldn't cause a problem.

Sounds more and more like it might have something to do with a scsi device, or the FWB drivers. Try updating the drivers for FWB on your non-System Startup drives, and update the Apple drivers for your startup drive. When the hard disk drivers become corrupted, all kinds of stuff can happen.

Make sure you have a version of FWB that is compatible with OS 8.6 as well: http://www.fwb.com/dc/hdt/main.html

You can download the proper Drive Setup 1.7.3 Apple disk drivers for OS 8.6 from here: http://asu.info.apple.com/swupdates.nsf/artnum/n11303

Later versions of Apple Drive setup will work, but are only available on the OS 9 CD and OS 9 downloadable updates that require previous installation of OS 9. I would stick with 8.6 on that machine.

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Bruce Paine
Digidesign

[Avid]

I would also recommend posting to the user forums at www.macfixit.com as well as searching there. Although something in your DAW setup may have contributed to the place you are now at, being unable to boot, I suspect the solution at this point may not have much to do with your audio software or hardware.

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Bruce Paine
Digidesign