PB G3 Pismo-Stalls, Hard Disk Disappears

Question

[NOTE - This message originally posted in Older Hardware discussion group. One response appears at end of original message.]
PB G3 firewire (Pismo)
OS 10.4.2
Fastmac G4 550 processor
576 mb RAM
Western Digital 60 MB HD (replacing Toshiba 40 mb HD that I thought was problem)
DESCRIPTION OF PROBLEM
The computer starts and works fine for a while until, without any discernible trigger (except maybe physically moving the PB), the PB stalls (twirling rainbow colored disk). Sometimes it first stalls in one application (so I can switch to other apps or the finder using the Command-Tab keys), but eventually it stalls in all apps. Force Quit option (keyboard or menu-activated) does not function. The only option is to shut down and restart. Sometimes it restarts, other times just a flashing question mark in the floppy disk icon.
If I happen to be in Word when the stall occurs (or is about to occur), I first get a dialague box telling me Word can't read from or write to the open file, saying there must be a bad network or floppy disk connection. I can usually quit Word when that dialogue appears, but restarting Word does nothing to fix the problem. Instead, I have to restart the PB.
With the flashing "?," I can hear the HD trying to start spinning again and again, but nothing happens. As noted below, starting with Diskwarrior has at least once resulted in Diskwarrior not being able to find the HD.
ATTEMPTED SOLUTIONS
Run the latest version of Diskwarrior. Does not solve the problem. Sometimes, Diskwarrior cannot even find the hard disk.
Replace the HD - did that switching the Toshiba for the Western Digital drive. The Toshiba works fine in a Firewire HD case. The problem can't be HD.
Reinstall OS X and applications - done multiple times, both archive and clean installs.
Make sure RAM is properly seated.
Reset PRAM.
WHAT'S WRONG?
I think the problem is hardware related (other than HD).
Any suggestions for what to look at and in what order? For example: G4 processor bad; RAM bad (but symptoms don't seem consistent with that); power/charge card bad; something with the heat sink; something with the cable that attaches to the HD.
Is there a way of checking these short of replacing them one by one?
Appreciate any help I can get.
Ken
On 12:04pm Sep 15, 2005 CDT, jpl wrote:
Subject: RE: PB G3 Pismo-Stalls, Hard Disk Disappears
Ken,
Welcome to the discussions!
A very good description of the problem! You obviously have covered a lot of territory troubleshooting this issue and it certainly appears to be a hardware-related.
I think you have fairly well isolated the problem as I see it:
- stall (spinning beach ball) that eventually occurs in all apps;
- a restart that produces the flashing '?';
- DiskWarrior's occasional failure to find the HD.
I would suggest you have a bad HD ribbon cable or a bad HD IDE bridge on the logic board (or some other issue on the logic board) that develops with heat.
Since you have a FireWire HD with a known-good HD, why don't you use Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable clone of your internal HD on the FW HD, then boot to the FW HD and run from it and see if the same issue develops.
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html
On 12:41pm Sep 15, 2005 CDT, Ken H wrote:
Subject: RE: PB G3 Pismo-Stalls, Hard Disk Disappears
Thanks for the quick response. I will try what you suggested.
I also was thinking that this may be a heat-related problem, and wonder if maybe I did not put enough - or too much - heat sink compound between the heat exchanger and the processor board. Could it be that simple?
One item I omitted from my original post: before I replaced the Toshiba HD, I noted, when I turned the sleeping PB on its end to carry in my laptop bag), the PB would almost always be stalled when I woke it from sleep, requiring a restart (and too often a directory rebuild using Diskwarrior or an archive

Answer 1

Rebuilt the directory using Diskwarrior, but on the last step received the following error message:
A disk malfunction occurred while writing the replacement directory to the disk. Rebuild this disk again."
Also, this rebuild showed a large number of repairs. When I ran Diskwarrior this morning, it showed there would be no changes to the directory. I've barely used the PB since this morning's rebuild.