[beardedmacuser]

WARNING – this is a long post which describes a problem I’ve found a way of avoiding. But it would be interesting to see it any of you guys have seen the same problem or know what the fault may be. Or it may be of help to others who experience the same problem.

Recently I bought a second-hand G4 PowerMac (dual 1.25 GHz (the 2MB L3 cache model), 2 gig RAM, Radeon 9800) to replace my 733 MHz G4 PowerMac which was finding Final Cut Pro and DVD Studio Pro hard work. I was considering a processor upgrade for my QuickSilver, but then I saw this for sale for not much more. Performance-wise it’s a beast compared to my QuickSilver. I bought it from an artist who had bought a dual 2.5 GHz G5 PowerMac and so was wanting rid of his old G4.

I took it home and transplanted my hard drives and dual-layer DVD burner from the QuickSilver. All seemed fantastic for a while until it started spontaneously freezing on me. It would totally lock-up and the mouse and keyboard did nothing. I don’t have another UNIX computer at home so I was unable to ssh into it to see if it had totally crashed or if it was just the window manager or something like that which had locked the machine (something which I’ve observed at work).

At first the freezes were fairly rare (although worrying), but they increased in frequency. I thought maybe the installation of OS X (10.4.2) didn’t like being transplanted from one machine to another, so I installed a totally fresh copy. It didn’t solve the problem. I tried removing every unnecessary piece of hardware or peripheral and even using a different monitor in case it was a problem caused by my 20 inch cinema display (I was getting desperate searching for ideas!). But none of these helped.

Then of course I realised I could check things out with the hardware test CD. When running the hardware test (both quick and extended) the logic board would pass OK and then sometimes, but not always, the machine would crash (kernel panic?) and the screen would several lines of text including something roughly like this…

Invalid memory access at %SRR0 : 65616478 % SRR1 : 40003030

And give me a command prompt to either Mac-boot or Shutdown.

Ahha, I thought! A memory error, so I spent a good while removing and testing different combinations of the RAM sticks in different slots. No change to the intermittent problem.

I was not happy, as what should be a fantastically fast machine (compared to my old Mac) seemed like it had a fundamental hardware fault.

I was then kind of stuck without an idea of what was wrong until I thought more about the hardware test. The logic board passed OK. But it would crash as soon as it started the storage test. Hmmm… maybe it’s to do with storage? So I unplugged the IDE cables from the motherboard and it passed several successive hardware tests with no problems! I hooked-up the 120 gig hard drive that was in the Mac when I bought it and it passed fine. So the guy hadn’t sold me a dodgy Mac as far as he was concerned. It just doesn’t like my hard drives which had never given me any problem at all in my QuickSilver. The hard drives are; 250 gig for OS X, 400 gig for video/DVD/etc, 60 gig for my iTunes library, all of which are decent 7200 rpm 8 MB cache Seagate hard drives. Fault diagnosed, but what to do next? Hard drives are kind of handy in a computer.

I had a PCI IDE card in my QuickSilver in order to use drives larger than 120 gigs, so I stuck that in my new PowerMac and wired everything up. No problems. Hardware test passed several times, and OS X is now solid as a rock. Not a single hint of a crash since! Boy was I relieved!!!

So it looks like my new Mac doesn’t get on with my hard drives, unless I use a PCI IDE card. I’m happy now and everything is running fantastically well. In fact the performance from the PCI IDE card may well be superior to the onboard ATA66 and ATA100 busses.

But do any of you guys know of this problem? What might be causing it?

Apologies for the long post…

[nickclarke]

I've got a G4 Powermac MDD. Not sure which specific model it is but it has the FW800 socket and gigabit ethernet.

Sounds like I may have the same issue. I only have two drives though, the 60Gb that came with the system and an additional 80Gb. Both are 7200RPM Seagate barracudas.

Someone did say they thought it was a problem only with the faster ports at the left rear of the case and recommended using the ATA66 ports at the front. I tried this but still have the same problem!

What PCI controller card are you using and what speed is it?

I've been having the same problem with my G4 dual 1.42, except for 1 minor difference... my system never kernel panics when I run the Apple Hardware Test. I ran it once for 24 hours looped and nothing came up as a problem. It will, however, crash if I try and start the computer up from the system disk that came with it, but that's an OS 10.2 disk and I'm on 10.4. I've had my G4 for a little over a year (bought used) and I've installed (clean and archived) 10.3 and 10.4 on it during that time, so I know its not an OS issue. As soon as I got the machine it started kernel panicing. At first it wasn't so often, but then it happened more and more, up to 5-6 times a day. I've run most every test that exits and everything passes. When the kernel panics get more frequent I run some utilities and that keeps them away for a while, but they always come back. A couple of months ago I decided that RAM was at fault and went out and bought a slew of new chips. Again, the panics went away for a while but came back. I ran a ton of RAM tests and they all come back fine. I've done a lot of research on this and I never came across anything about the internal hard drives being the problem. I have 3 inside: 200 system, 120, and 160. Now, I wonder if this could be the problem. 1 thing keeps me skeptical though. Before I added the extra 2 drives, right after I bought the computer, the system paniced on me. Then, after I installed the other drives, it started happening more frequently. Some people suggest this could be a motherboard or processor issue. Other than AHT or TechTools Deluxe I have no way of verifying this. I did disable 1 processor with CHUD tools, but that didn't stop anything from happening. I'm interested in hearing if anyone else has had this problem or if a viable solution is out there. Also, I too want to know what brand PCI card beardedmacuser bought and if he had any problems snaking the cable through. Thanks!

[Ebby]

I've had intermittent crashes in OS 9 where jumpers were set incorrectly for the devices on an IDE cable. (I never used cable select) That has become #1 on my checklist of IDE related problems.

[Gargoyle]

It's not beyond the realms of possibility that the IDE controller on the motherboard has crapped out. And by using the PCI controller you are providing a work around.

[PB PM]

Do you have more than one hard drive set as master? (someone already brought up the issue of jumper settings on the drive) That would cause problems.

I may be wrong on this, but I think I've read that on this G4 model, or with OS X, or something like that, the IDE drives do not need to be set as master and slave. Maybe its just a cable select thing. Either way, my system has the jumpers set to the correct drives and the drives show up in the correct configuration. Just to be sure though I've switched around the drives over the past year. Did nothing for me.

[PB PM]

OSX might be able to deal with it, but that doesn't mean it likes improperly set drives.

[beardedmacuser]

Originally Posted by 1600DOCTORB Also, I too want to know what brand PCI card beardedmacuser bought and if he had any problems snaking the cable through. Thanks!

Sorry, have been away from the world of phone, internet and TV for a few days (has to be recommended!) entertained solely by the company of friends. But it's good to be back...

Wow! I didn't expect this thread to be resurrected after this long.

The IDE card I use is a Sonnet Tempo ATA133. Configured without hard drive sleep because that isn't supported on some firmware versions for the card and not knowing what firmware I have I just disable it anyway (and there's no advantage to sleeping a hard drive in a desktop computer anyway). There are probably cheaper cards out there, but it seems to do the job and was purchased for my previous PowerMac which didn't support large hard drives.

[nickclarke]

FINALLY FIXED

PROBLEM
Panther 10.3.9 freezing (completely, no crash log, cant even SSH into it) occasionally in Cubase SX3 but almost always in iDVD.

These are the things I tried.
1) Bought new memory (Kingston), ran memtest on memory (no faults found)
2) Moved the drives from the ATA100 onto the ATA66 bus beneath the optical drives. Problem persisted.
3) Tried taking everything I have added out (so it was as I received the unit originally). Problem persisted.
4) Tried taking numerous temperature measurements from various points thinking it might be an overheating issue.
5) Downgraded Quicktime.

SOLUTION
Bought a Sonnet tempo ATA133 card from macheaven.co.uk the other day. Fitted it into the PCI slot 2 with one harddrive on each IDE port (both set as master). The firmware that came on the sonnet card was 4.5

Just finished encoding a DVD in iDVD 5.0.1 this morning at 3am. Worked without a hitch although it took almost 5 hours. I even managed some other applications while it was doing its business and not a single glitch or freeze!!!!

1Ghz G4 Powermac MDD (FW800)
1Gb RAM
Sonnet tempo ATA133 in PCI slot 2 (firmware 4.5)
Terratec EWS88MT audio card in PCI slot 4
Panther 10.3.9

The only fun bit was trying to route the cables from the tempo to the drives and closing the case. Thinking of buying some round cables instead of the flat ones as i'm a little concerned about air circulation as everything is very close together when the lid is closed.

I believe the issue is with a faulty ATA controller on the logic board. Either faulty controller chips or quite possibly crosstalk as the ATA100 bus is routed very close to the processor. Apple will not recognize the fault as they would have to recall all logic boards in the G4 MDD (which I believe has the faster controllers). This would be very expensive for them and so I think they are keeping quiet. It would however be nice if someone at apple could confirm 100% that there is a problem with the onboard controllers as this was my first mac and might be my last!

For now i'm a happy mac owner again.

[wowhitedrs]

I thought I was going nuts for last few months. I bought a dual 1.42. I bought it used, but felt that the unit was good from the seller. I have looked and finally tonight fell onto this site and feel some relief that I am at least not crazy! The unit continually freezes on me, I have gotten to the point I am a save after ever modification guy now. I periodically get the kernal thing, but mostly the screen freezes and no mouse movement or action from keyboard works. I have had a few weird things lately where a single program wont respond to closing or force quitting while at the same time other programs will continue to run? Then after a bit the system freezes. So I will now try the Sonnett Tempo ATA 133 and hope I obtain similar results. thanks guys for restoring my sanity.

[beardedmacuser]

Good to hear you've possibly solved your stability problems! The MDD PowerMacs are decent machines, but rather flawed in a few ways.

Originally Posted by nickclarke The only fun bit was trying to route the cables from the tempo to the drives and closing the case. Thinking of buying some round cables instead of the flat ones as i'm a little concerned about air circulation as everything is very close together when the lid is closed.

I've tried both flat and round cables, and actually I found the flat ones easier to install in the end. Maybe my round cables were a bit chunky? I think ultimately the best way to route the cables would be under the motherboard, but now that I've got them to fit OK and the case closes, they're out of sight and out of mind.

But it's a bit of a bitch routing cables from the PCI slots at the top of the case to the hard drives at the bottom.

Also, if you're concerned about circulation, I added a PCI extractor fan (slowed from 12V down to something like 7V to make it quiet) in the top PCI slot (furthest from the AGP slot) which really helps with the cooling and is really cheap too!

[beardedmacuser]

Originally Posted by wowhitedrs I thought I was going nuts for last few months. I bought a dual 1.42. I bought it used, but felt that the unit was good from the seller. I have looked and finally tonight fell onto this site and feel some relief that I am at least not crazy! The unit continually freezes on me, I have gotten to the point I am a save after ever modification guy now. I periodically get the kernal thing, but mostly the screen freezes and no mouse movement or action from keyboard works. I have had a few weird things lately where a single program wont respond to closing or force quitting while at the same time other programs will continue to run? Then after a bit the system freezes. So I will now try the Sonnett Tempo ATA 133 and hope I obtain similar results. thanks guys for restoring my sanity.

Also, If you're confident enough to do it, perhaps you should check that your heatsink and thermal paste on the CPUs are seated OK? I've seen one MDD PowerMac (dual 1.25 GHz, so with a different heatsink to yours) with stability problems which was solved by removing the heatsink and properly replacing the thermal paste. The crappy stuff that had been used by the factory wasn't in full contact with the heatsink for one of the processors. And if you redo it yourself then you can make sure you use proper thermal paste and that it's done carefully and properly.

[wowhitedrs]

UREKA! I installed the Sonnett card and all is great, works without a clitch all day long, I have never had it work this long without a freeze. I never would have thought of it on my own. Money invested saved finally!

[wowhitedrs]

Well, it was too good to last I guess. The system works but not without about 1 freeze every day or so. I might go a while without any snags, and then BAM! the screen freezes, no cursor movement, cant force quit, have to shut down and restart. So I am not sure what to think here. I have no other ideas. When it works, GREAT! when it freezes, well there it is. But I do still have the lock ups, have only had the kernal run 1 or 2 times, the lockup happens at the weirdest of times, move the mouse and suddenly lockup. So I dont have a clue.

[nickclarke]

Well mine worked fine up until a couple of weeks ago when I was importing video into iMovie and it ran out of disk space.
After clearing space and continuing. It started freezing again!!! (mouse pointer freezes, keyboard locks have to hold the power button and restart). As before this mainly seems to happen in iMovie/iDVD and when it's accessing the hdd. So I still believe it has something to do with the disk. I might take a look at the heatsink but am running out of ideas (and patience). If only Apple could shed some light on this issue as it seems quite common.