Quicksilver PowerMac G4 800 Spontaneous Startup

Hi to all on the forums!
My G4 800 Quicksilver has developed a problem following shutdown, after about 15 minutes, the machine starts up spontaneously. This has happened a handful of times in the last months. Most recently, the spontantous startup led to the alarming flashing startup light and bad hardware tone. Reset button dumped me into open firmware. Mac starts OK, but will shut down spontaneously during sleep.
Internal battery was replaced recently, but did nothing to solve these problems.
Would appreciate any help available to troubleshoot this.
Cheers,
Alan
Powermac G4 Quicksilver Mac OS X (10.4.3)

Hi, Friedrich!
Disconnect your peripherals. Disconnect the power cord, remove the battery, reset the PMU, depress the front power button for a few seconds, wait thirty minutes or so for the logic board's capacitors to discharge, then reconnect the power cord and attempt startup without the battery.
If no luck, then using a voltmeter, test the line voltage from the wall outlet through the power cord at female end of the cord. If the reading is normal, reconnect the power cord to the tower, open the side door, and use the voltmeter to test for DC trickle voltage coming from the power supply...
Here's a link to the PSU testing procedure you can use for your QS Mac. Please note that the only difference from the Gigabit Ethernet model test shown is that your QS should read +25 volts across pins 11 and 22, rather than the +28 volts shown:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=95064
Here's a link with a color-coded pinout diagram for a Quicksilver (scroll down on the page) which will help identify the right wires to test:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/tips/MDDps_mods/MDD_PSMods.html
Test the power supply from the wire side of the power supply's harness where it connects to the logic board. Don't disconnect the connector from the board, but instead just insert the probes alongside the wires into the appropriate pin terminals and be sure to make metal-to-metal contact with the pins at the end of these wires within the connector. If the first test for trickle voltage reads zero voltage, retest to be sure that pin to probe contact was indeed made. If you still get a zero reading, your power supply is defective.
Gary

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Spontaneous startups and shutdowns

Ever since I got my G5 in 2004, I've had spontaneous startup/shutdown problems. I will wake up in the morning or come home from work and find the computer on and at the login prompt (I have set no such predetermined startup time.) Or, I'll be working and all of a sudden it powers down and then powers back up (it will bring me back to the same screen and what I was doing), but after repeated occurrences of shutdown/startup, usually in short succession, it will permanently shut down, requiring me to shut off the battery backup into which it is plugged to reset the whole system. Then things settle down for a while. Then a month or two later, it will go through another bad spate of spontaneous startups and shutdowns, almost like it just got over a cold only to contract a new one.
At first, Apple said it was a motherboard problem which they replaced; that didn't solve my problem. Then they said it was a bad video cable to the monitor and repaired that; that didn't solve my problem, either. They asked if I had any peripherals (printer, scanner, external HD) hooked up and said such items can cause erratic behavior (to which I felt like asking "then why do you manufacture your computers with ports in them so users CAN plug in other devices?") I've given up taking it to them because I can't make it replicate its erratic behavior and unless they see what it's doing, they can't do anything about it (and I don't think they really believe me, anyway...)
I've reset my PRAM. I've reset my SMU (actually that happens every time I shut down the computer because I shut down the battery backup every time to prevent unsupervised morning startup.) I've run Disk Warrior. I've checked and confirmed my power source. I've literally unplugged everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) and re-connected all components. All to no avail. I even have video of it happening because Apple doesn't believe what I'm describing. Is it possible that my computer has been infected and is one of those "slave computers" that hackers use to do their bidding? I've wondered about that...
Has anyone else experienced this?

It almost sounds like a bad UPS.
Have you tried bypassing the UPS? What is the rating of the thing?

Quicksilver Powermac G4 DVD drive question, please help!!

Hi Guys I really hope someone can help me.
I have got a Quicksilver powermac G4 (2001) it has only an internal CD drive. I have purchased the lastest tiger series a s cds to be up to date. However, I've the got the computer mainly for recording music. I have Cubase system which requires a dvd drive. Can anyone recommend a external dvd drive I can use that is good enough for my mac and recording. I am frightened to buy an internal drive as I've no idea how to install one.
Will be so grateful guys,
Hannah

Hi
The Pioneer DVR-110D (or newer DVR-111D) is a popular choice, works with Tiger and burns both CDs and DVDs. Here in the UK they cost around £30 and in the States around $40 I think.
The following tips may also help with installation, although most are fairly obvious:
1. Try and use the right sized screwdriver, one that fits snugly into the screws, so you don't risk chewing up the screw heads.
2. When you're removing the old drive from the computer, get someone to hold it as you undo the screws and disconnect the cables, so you don't risk it dropping onto the logic board.
3. The power cable can be a tight fit, so you may need to pry it off the old drive with your finger nails or gently rock it from side to side. Don't pull directly on the cables though.
4. The power cable and ribbon cable connectors are keyed (or shaped) so they'll only fit one way. If you're having trouble connecting them to the new drive, make sure they're the right way up.
You'll also just need to check the new drive is configured correctly. On the back there should be two rows of pins with a small jumper block. By moving the jumper block between different pairs of pins, you can configure the drive as master, slave or CS (cable select). It needs to be set to master. The drive should come with instructions or have a sticker on it indicating which pair of pins is master.
I hope this helps.

Powermac G4 spontaneous startup

Hi to all on the forums!
My G4 800 Quicksilver has developed a problem following shutdown, after about 15 minutes, the machine starts up spontaneously. This has happened a handful of times in the last months. Most recently, the spontantous startup led to the alarming flashing startup light and bad hardware tone. Reset button dumped me into open firmware. Mac starts OK, but will shut down spontaneously during sleep.
Internal battery was replaced recently, but did nothing to solve these problems.
Would appreciate any help available to troubleshoot this.
Cheers,
Alan

Yes, it does reset the motherboard and does a more effective job of it. The garbled boot tone is disturbing though. While I have heard of having a clipped boot tone or any of the other tones mentioned on the link provided above the garbled boot tone is the puzzler. I'm thinking that it could be a combination of one of the components mentioned in the article and corruption of Power On Self Test that is masking the correct tone.
When you reset the motherboard as I outlined and go to boot for the first time pay close attention to the tone. Hopefully it will be different and give you some indication of what other component is acting up.
If it is a user preference that is corrupted then create and login as another user.
If it is a system preference then it could be tougher to track down but the symptoms you outline with the flashing lights and garbled boot tone lead me to think that something deeper is the cause.
When my computer starts acting up I usually run Applejack. It is one of the best free utilities that I have seen.
http://applejack.sourceforge.net/#top
Pay close attention to installation instructions and have an Apple keyboard handy for booting into single user.
I forgot. Are you using an Apple monitor that can boot the computer? There are reports of these monitors causing strange startups and shutdowns.

PowerMac G4 800 Quicksilver does nothing

Hi,
during the last weeks my old PowerMac just went off for three or four times, pressing the powerswitch boots it again and everything was fine again for some days.
This morning I got the same thing but it did nothing when hitting the power button.
No fan, no beep, no light – exactly nothing.
I reseted the PMU, took of the PCI-cards, removed the memory and tried another RAM, still the same.
The last thing I tried was removing the power cord, waiting some seconds, removing battery and waiting about an hour. Plugged the power cord back in, tried to boot, nothing.
As today is sunday I can't buy a new battery but I'll try this tomorrow, can this be the source of the problem?
Regards,
Friedrich

Hi, Friedrich!
Disconnect your peripherals. Disconnect the power cord, remove the battery, reset the PMU, depress the front power button for a few seconds, wait thirty minutes or so for the logic board's capacitors to discharge, then reconnect the power cord and attempt startup without the battery.
If no luck, then using a voltmeter, test the line voltage from the wall outlet through the power cord at female end of the cord. If the reading is normal, reconnect the power cord to the tower, open the side door, and use the voltmeter to test for DC trickle voltage coming from the power supply...
Here's a link to the PSU testing procedure you can use for your QS Mac. Please note that the only difference from the Gigabit Ethernet model test shown is that your QS should read +25 volts across pins 11 and 22, rather than the +28 volts shown:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=95064
Here's a link with a color-coded pinout diagram for a Quicksilver (scroll down on the page) which will help identify the right wires to test:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/tips/MDDps_mods/MDD_PSMods.html
Test the power supply from the wire side of the power supply's harness where it connects to the logic board. Don't disconnect the connector from the board, but instead just insert the probes alongside the wires into the appropriate pin terminals and be sure to make metal-to-metal contact with the pins at the end of these wires within the connector. If the first test for trickle voltage reads zero voltage, retest to be sure that pin to probe contact was indeed made. If you still get a zero reading, your power supply is defective.
Gary

Powermac dp 800 server

i have a powermac g4 dp 800 server and on everymac .com the specs say it doesnt support dual displays.i hooked too put one vga and 1 adc and the adc got a little dim but not much.i unhooked the second display will this hurt my hardware if i hook it back up and why is it that it doesnt support dual displays
thanks

The original Quicksilver G4s shipped with several different display cards. Early display cards did not support dual displays even though some had multiple connectors.
The Quicksilver 2002 models all shipped with display cards that supported multiple displays.
As japamac has indicated, whether this feature is supported or not depends on the display card in your Mac. Apple System Profiler will tell you its make & model.
If all you need is a slower second display to hold palettes and tools, you can add additional PCI-slot display cards to use additional displays, but they will not be as fast as your main display.

Powermac G5 - Freeze after startup, tried everything

Hi, I have a Powermac G5 Dual, its a few years old and I previously had an issue with the screen (line patterns and lank screen) which was serviced and in the end they replaced my ATI Radeon graphis card which seemed to do the trick.
Since updating to Leopard OS 10.5.6 whenever I start my computer up I get the chime etc and i can log in on my password screen, but straight on the desktop the mouse keyboard everything freezes and occasionally this is followed or preceeded with a blank screen. The fans then Rev up pretty loud. Additonally i do not have any 3rd party RAM
Ive tried a lot of stuff such as
resetting PRAM
trying to boot in safe mode (gets stuck on white screen with apple logo, doesnt boot)
running fsck -fy
Can anyone help?

Dear Dgandley,
If it should go wrong with the drive (which I honestly can't imagine), at least you tried the cheapest option and you're still be able to buy a new computer. It's an easy job installing those drives, certainly much more easy then in a MacMini! And harddisks come usually with 3 or 5 years guarantee. The only thing you should be aware of is static electricity, so ground yourself and don't touch the electronics!
Seagate is not the best choice, because of firmware problems with some of those.
Take my advise and do what I did: buy yourself one (or maybe two) 640 GB Western Digital WD6400AAKS "Blue" drives and you'll have one of the fastest, coolest running and most silent universal drives you can get for your good money. It's not the large capacity that counts here, but the overall speed of this particular type of harddisk (the 320 GB version in the same series has proven to be much slower!).
For super fast booting, devide it in f.i. 150 GB for the first partition (that's the outer part of the spindle with platters inside, which rotates at the highest speed), and reserve that for your system and applications only. The rest can be used for storage.
Again, success and best regards,
Robbert

PM G4 Quicksilver (dual 800)

Hi @ all
Is there any way to make a Quicksilver G4 (dual 800) more quiet? Now my Quicksilver is very loud so I can't make my work while the System is on. I thought about changing the PSU-Fan and the Case-Fan.
Is there a possybility to change the Heatsink that is installed now to copper or any other Heatsink?
I even need a airport card for the Quicksilver where can I get this from and what is the price for it?
Thx for your help
PowerMac G4 Quicksilver Mac OS X (10.4.7) dual 800, 1.5GB RAM 500GB HDD

Hi, positioning the computer actually makes more a difference than most folks suspect. Putting it behind the desk, in the corner, and so on allows other things to come between you and the sound. As long as the air flow isn't obstructed, that's a good thing. Have you blown out the ducts/openings lately? Dust buildup causes the fans to work harder. Replacing internal devices with external ones also takes the load off the computer, causing it to run quieter. Here are even more radical ideas if the sound is driving you nuts:
1> Water cooling kits. (Not for the faint of heart!)
2> Sound insulation inside the case -- Dynamat, packing foam, and other material. You can use this on particular devices that are loud (say like older hard drives) or just line the case itself with the material.
HTH,
~FifthWheel

Correction : How does Macbook (not PRO) compare to G4/800 Quicksilver

I currently have a G4/800 Quicksilver Powermac with 1Gb of memory, two 7200rpm hard drives, and a ATI RAdeon 7500 GPU with 32Mb of RAM.
I mainly use my computer for amateur photograph editing (Photoshop elements) and video-editing (imovie and Final cut express), and I play the occasional game (older games like wolfenstein, medal of honor, warcraft 3). I've read a lot on this forum about how crappy the GMA in the macbook is, but to give me an idea, how does it compare to my equally crappy ATI radeon 7500 ? Would the macbook be ok to play games like C&C generals, Homeworld 2 and other 3D strategy games ? I like the occasional 3D shooter but I don't need the graphical splendour of Quake 4. And I've read that Final Cut pro has some issues with the macbook but I suppose Final cut express would be ok ?
How would the 2Gh Macbook compare to my G4 Quicksilver speedwise overall (I would max out the ram in the macbook) ?

Well lets compare the two.
Old mac New mac
g4/800 mhz 2ghz intel core duo
1gb ram 1gb (minimum)
7500 gpu 32mb Intel GMA 950 64MB
Not only does the processor in the macbook easily outperform the g4/800, but the new gpu offers double the mb and I belive the processor within it is better aswell.
If you was to max out the ram, to say 2gb this will improve gameplay/editing extremely. The limiting factor here will be the graphics, but Im sure it will do the job.

How does Macbook Pro compare to G4/800 Powermac

I currently have a G4/800 Quicksilver Powermac with 1Gb of memory, two 7200rpm hard drives, and a ATI RAdeon 7500 GPU with 32Mb of RAM.
I mainly use my computer for amateur photograph editing (Photoshop elements) and video-editing (imovie and Final cut express), and I play the occasional game (older games like wolfenstein, medal of honor, warcraft 3). I've read a lot on this forum about how crappy the GMA in the macbook is, but to give me an idea, how does it compare to my equally crappy ATI radeon 7500 ? Would the macbook be ok to play games like C&C generals, Homeworld 2 and other 3D strategy games ? I like the occasional 3D shooter but I don't need the graphical splendour of Quake 4. And I've read that Final Cut pro has some issues with the macbook but I suppose Final cut express would be ok ?
How would the 2Gh Macbook compare to my G4 Quicksilver speedwise overall (I would max out the ram in the macbook) ?
G4/800 QS - G3/400 Pismo PB Mac OS X (10.3.9)
G4/800 QS - G3/400 Pismo PB Mac OS X (10.3.9)

I dunno your asking a MBP question in the MacBook
forum.
Try asking in the correct forum.
If I were to hazard a guess, I'd say that the MBP
would be faster then the QS on all accounts even when
running photoshop (which would run under rosetta).
The G4 has faster drives going for it, but overall
the MBP specs are superior to the g4 so my vote is
that yuor going to see an improvement. The only
suggestion I'd give is boost the ram to at least a
gig and your doing a lot of photoshop work,then get
1.5 to 2.0 gig.
Mike
Sorry, I actually meant the Macbook.

Quicksilver 800mhz stopped booting after unplugging IDE ribbon

Hello all,
I just purchased a used Quicksilver D. Processor 800 machine which came preloaded with a very working OS X 10.3.9. Upon my receiving this system, I noticed it was extremely dusty, dirty, and had a few small spots of oxidation/rust on the metal case. So this past week I went through and actually dismantled the entire system, taking great care to clean everything thoroughly.
Upon putting the system back together I noticed that when I pressed the power button, it did not power up. In fact no fans spun up. No drives spun up, the power light even was lit until I released the power button. The red-light on the motherboard flashed once very quickly. Then I remembered back to what a friend told me is that after every hardware change I should press the CUDA button on the mobo beside the battery. I did that while pressing the power button and after a time or two of that, the system worked great. It booted right up and went right into OSX.
However, I decided to swap out DVD-RW drives because I was having problems burning using an IOmagic one. I figured by putting the factory DVD-RW superdrive back in, that would sove the problem. By this point the G4 had been working great for several days without an issue. However when I opened the case and unplugged the IDE & power cables from the DVD drive, then remembered I wanted to get back into OSX. But when i hit power, the same symptoms as above reappeared. No fans or drives spun up. The light on the power button went out as soon as I released the power button.
I figured I needed to press the CUDA button again. However no amount of pressing/holding/pressing with holding the power button etc have changed this. All I did was unplug an ide and power cable, and it caused this?! I've made sure that there are no items grounding out. All of the jumpers are set correctly. I even removed the ram, CPU, AGP card to make sure they were seated properly. None of these have solved my issue.
I'm tossing this out there to the OSX/mac expert communiitity.

bawalker:
You might try a deeper reset of the logic board:
Disconnect everything from the back of the Mac except the power cord.
Touch a metal slot cover on the back of the case as a static discharge precaution.
Unplug the power cord from the back of the Mac and open the side door.
Remove the battery.
Depress and hold the PMU button for a five count.
Depress and hold the power button on the front of the case for a five count.
Let the Mac sit for a half hour or so to insure that its capacitors fully discharge.
Reinsert the battery and close up the case.
Connect the keyboard, mouse and monitor only, then attempt to boot normally.
Don't press down on the PMU button more than once between startup attempts. Apple says that doing so can cause the PMU to stop responding and can cause a quick battery drain should it do so. Here's a link to some info on the reset:
Resetting the PMU
Gary
1GHz DP G4 Quicksilver 2002, 400MHz B&W rev.2 G3, Mac SE30 Mac OS X (10.4.5) 5G iPod, Epson 2200 & R300 & LW Select 360 Printers, Epson 3200 Scanner

Issues with getting OS9 onto my Powermac G4

I bought a quicksilver powermac G4 the other day to run OS9. It had a clean install of 10.4 on it and no matter what I do it will not boot from my OS 9.2.1 disc.
I've tried holding "C" when booting, holding "Option" when booting and selecting the CD from the boot menu, and going to system preferences > startup disk and selecting the CD as the startup disc. Nothing has worked.
When I try to run the installer from the CD it gets about 90% done and then I get this error
http://traviscrossett.com/screen.jpg
I've heard that I might not have the right firmware to run OS9, but I don't know how to check what version I have, nor do I know which one I need.
What am I doing wrong?
Message was edited by: Crossett
Message was edited by: Crossett

Hi, Crosset -
Welcome to Apple's Discussions.
The issue is primarily one of which Quicksilver model you have -
Article #TA25585 - Power Mac G4: How to Differentiate Between Models (part 2)
The first model series of Quicksilver machines can use a retail (white label, large gold 9) OS 9.2.1 Install CD. They can not, however, use a Software Install CD for OS 9.2.1 which came with a different model Mac.
The second model series of QuickSilver, the 2002 models, can not use OS 9.2.1 from any source; the only way to install a bootable OS 9 on those models is by using the original disk set that came with them, which installs a model-specific version of OS 9.2.2.
When installing OS 9 (any version), if you run into difficulties try disconnecting all externals except monitor, keyboard, and mouse.
OS 9 can not be used for booting from a volume larger than 200GB.
When booted to an OS 9 Install CD, if the hard drive is not visible to the installer nor visible on the desktop, this indicates that the drive has not had OS 9 drivers installed. A default install of OSX does not necessarily install OS 9 drivers.
Article #TA20774 - Disk Is Available in Mac OS X But Not in Mac OS 9

Can I install internal HD from PowerMac G4 in my Mac Pro?

I have an old, Quicksilver PowerMac G4. After purchasing a Mac Pro, I want to use the internal storage from the old one as a backup system for the new one. Can I physically install the my 3 internal drives from the G4 into the 3 open slots on my Mac Pro? I know nothing about how the architecture of internal drives have changed since I bought them in 2004 (I'm assuming a LOT). I'd rather not keep the G4 sitting in my office, taking up space, and I thought this might be the best way to go about utilizing that HD space (I have about 280GB).

the first SATA were just a PATA with Marvel bridge slapped on and were not native SATA.
Perpendicular came later.
So it went from 60 to 75 and then to 105MB/sec and now outstrips even that.
15K SCSI went from 60 to 75 to 90 (the Maxtor Atlas 15K II was a nice little drive that gave the Cheetah a run for it).
As Maxtor was improving and Seagate was having terrible drive firmware issues it was however too late for Maxtor that had lost market confidence.
The "deathstar" was due to use of non-Lucent DSP but there too even though later models were fine and the 180 GXPs were golden, IBM first shed PC business and then IBM Hitachi business.
I never cared for Seagate beyond their Cheetah line, switched to Maxtor and while never had great luck with IBM Ultrastar SCSI their PATA and SATA were fine by me. And avoided the 75GXP Deathstars.
Yes a lot of change but I would go so far and to simplify as just the switch to SATA is all.

Will OSX Tiger on a Quicksilver boot from a 300 g HD

I have a few issues going and for background you can go to this post
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=278373&tstart=0
But I have 4 internal HDs. And my Powermac Dual 800 will only boot from either the CD or the Tiger OS on my 80 gig installed directly to the Motherboard. I have three drives installed on a Sonnet Trio. The sizes are 300/300/160. None of them are partitioned into smaller volumes.All are recognized as correct size but whenever I install Tiger onto them the Machine will not restart to them. They will sometimes (after a PMU or PRAM reset) power up them but will not restart to them. UGH This has been a 4 day investigation. Any help in either this thread or the linked one above would be great. Man if Steve wasnt speaking on January 9th I would have already just ordered a new mac...But I have learned to wait till after these announcements.
PMac Dual 800, 1 gig RAM,80/60gig HD, SDrive Mac OS X (10.4.3)

So why not just put the 300 on the main IDE bus attached to the logic board, and move the 80GB to the card???

Swapping out hard drives - Quicksilver

I have 2 identical G4 Quicksilver PowerMacs and the logic board is fading fast on the first one. The 2nd one has been offline for a few years now and I would like to move the drive with my apps and data from the 1st machine into the 2nd one (I started the 2nd one today and it ran great).
Other than moving my drive to the 2nd machine, are there any other things that I should consider? Both drives are the same size, same make/model etc. I was going to move the larger RAM sticks to the 2nd machine and boot it up prior to the swap but cannot think of anything else that might be a show-stopper.

Hello BB,
I'm with Grant.
I'm sure they do, but I've never seen a logic board fade fast, or slow; they usually work or they don't, and they don't fail very often.
By, contrast, hard drives fail all the time - particularly when they're eight years old - and often in a protracted manner, so that you can see (or hear) their demise coming. It might be time to be sure you're backed up.
If your Macs are absolutely identical, everything interchanges freely. (2001 and 2002 Quicksilvers, however, are not identical, as the 2001s do not natively recognise the larger [over 128GB] hard drives.)
Dual processor Quicksilvers tend to run a little hot - some hotter than others - which can shorten component life. If you don't mind the extra noise, you can fit a more powerful CPU fan; makes it sound like a leaf blower, though.
Regards,
Jon

Quicksilver PowerMac G4 800 Spontaneous Startup

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