9600 needs 2 tries for startup...

Question

We have a PowerMac 9600 at work. It was the main graphics workstation back when I started but is now serving as the scanning station. For the entire time I have worked here, I have had to start up the computer twice in order for it to actually start up.
Basically, I come in first thing in the morning and press the startup key on the keyboard. I get the typical startup noises and a startup chime, then nothing. no response from the display...nothing.
So I do a Control-Command-Restart. Another chime and everything starts up normally.
Its npt a major thing, I've gotten used to doing it, but I'm curious as to why it happens or if anything can be done about it.
Power Macintosh 9600/300MHz, 384 MB Ram, MacOS 9.1

Answer 1

Phil,
My simplistic guess is that your question can be answered in one word, patience.
You have been doing what I call a warm boot. A cold start with a dead PRAM battery will cause the CPU to go out and look at every device and build an index of what is out there. That is part of the dumb PC/ smart user vs. smart Mac dumb user routine.
Bill Gates said "I am smart and only computer savvy individuals like me are going to use computers so the machine can be dumb and we will tell it every little thing to do." That is why PCs are too dumb to know that when you put in a disk or a disc that you actually want to read data off the disk/c. You have to tell a PC to open the drive.
Steve Jobs said "Consumers are going to want to use computers without learning a second language so Mac programmers and Apple engineers must design the computer to be smart and intuitive." When you put a Zip disk into a drive connected to a Mac, the CPU already knows the drive is there because of the device polling process during startup. In fact, Apple engineers were smart enough to let the Mac BOOT from the Zip drive! What a concept.
I would dare say that if you gave the 9600 two minutes to startup, it would probably figure things out on its own and eventually load the system folder. By performing a warm boot, you interrupt the startup process and tell the CPU to use the last known parameters.
Warning, this description is based on 22 years of tinkering and the behavior of 300+ Macs and not a scientific treatise that traces the electrons through the machine. Apple does offer Knowledge Base articles on the boot sequence and Grant may know of Apple Developers guidelines on the subject.
Buy a new PRAM battery, start as you have been, then turn the computer off and give the 2 minute boot time a try. It just might work. Then again, I could just be blowing smoke!
Ji˜m
Sample boot sequence articles:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=22059
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30897