PowerMac G3 B&W Mac OS 9.2.1 - No mouse and keyboard after boot

[8bitSheep]

Hello,

I recently decided it would be fun to play around with pre Mac OS X on my G3 B&W tower as I don't have much experience with these operating systems. While searching online for information I came across this site and downloaded the Mac OS 9.2.1 image. I managed to install 9.2.1 a few days ago but when I boot up the system doesn't response to keyboard or mouse clicks (the mouse pointer does respond to movement, just no clicks).

Interestingly, on subsequent boots due to having to hard reset the machine the boot process prompts a warning about the file system needing to be checked and once the check is complete I am able to click "Done" with the mouse to continue to boot process. So, the mouse is fully working initially but something happens by the end of the boot process to stop it fully working. I forgot to check if hitting return on the keyboard will also work at this point but I will check that the next chance I get.

Google results suggested that it could be 'frozen' due to network initialization delay (I initially did not plug in a network cable) but the problem is still there with a network cable plugged in into the network and leaving it for quite a new minutes does not fix anything.

Another possibility according to Google was an extension conflict and that booting with Shift key held down would load the OS without extensions. So far I have not been able to get the boot process to detect the Shift key so I have not been able to see if that makes a difference. I intend to try a different USB PC keyboard soon. This leads me to my questions...

1) I do not have an ADB keyboard and mouse nor do I have the original G3 B&W keyboard and mouse, should a generic PC USB keyboard work okay with this computer and operating system?

2) Does anyone have any other ideas what it could be or what I could try?


I have not made many changes to the system except to upgrade the RAM to 1GiB and replaced the graphics card with a newer ATI model (9200 I think). The machine itself is a 400MHz second revision model and has been working okay with Debian GNU/Linux and OpenBSD over the last few years so I think the hardware itself is okay.

Any help, information or pointers would be gratefully received.

Thanks,
8bitSheep

[Europa]

The shift key trick is a bit fiddly. I'd suggest holding it down when you hear the chime and then releasing it momentarily and then holding it down again. Really just keep trying until you get it. That's what I do.

Your description of the issue does suggest that it is an extension issue. For some reason USB Overdrive was giving me an issue where it would keep my mouse from working. Given that the dialogue that comes up telling you that your computer didn't shut down correctly allows you to click with your mouse, it seems that there is nothing wrong with the hardware (you could try a different mouse on that system, just to rule out the mouse buttons as the issue).

Really any wired mouse and keyboard that uses USB or ADB should work. The reason why I say wired is because I've had hit-and-miss experiences with wireless mice and keyboards when trying to get them to respond to keystrokes at startup.

Hopefully this helps

[8bitSheep]

Hello RogerWilco,

Thank you for your response. It was helpful to get that clarification and confirmation regarding this issue.

I was able to try again last night using a different keyboard and was able to boot with extensions disabled and the keyboard and mouse functioned properly so that seems to confirm that the cause is extensions related. After I played around for a bit (it was my first time booting a working OS 9 after all) I tried booting again using the original keyboard but I was still unable to trigger the disable extension behaviour. Weird!

Anyway, at least there is some progress and so now I need to get familiar with the extension manager and work my way though the extensions and find out which of them are causing the problem. Any there any known trouble makers that I should look at first?

Thanks again.

8bitSheep

[Europa]

No problem! I'm glad I could be of assistance. I don't know of anything specifically, but I would suggest looking for any extensions that alter mouse behavior at all, such as USB Overdrive. Conflict Catcher is a good program to have on hand for times like this. Below is a link to The Macintosh Garden and the version I use with 9.2. Sorry I can't be of more assistance. That's the best I can give you right now. Maybe someone else can chime in with extensions that are known to cause issues.

I hope this helps

Here is Conflict Catcher. It will completely take over startup after Happy Mac, so some keys will do different things. It is an indispensable tool to have when you need to do something like this. It might actually have an operational mode for exactly what you want to do.

http://macintoshgarden.org/apps/conflict-catcher-9

[GaryN]

This may be a coincidence BUT…

We are currently having an almost identical issue with another B&W and 9.2.1 here:

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,4845.msg34786/topicseen.html#new

Similar issue: Almost finished boot, then a hang. His B&W has a Yikes! motherboard.
I am about to learn where the other guy's 9.2.1 came from. Although he says it's a CD, it may well be a CD burned from the same image…
You may want to follow the other thread as well.

[Astroman]

I have not made many changes to the system except to upgrade the RAM to 1GiB and replaced the graphics card with a newer ATI model (9200 I think). The machine itself is a 400MHz second revision model and has been working okay with Debian GNU/Linux and OpenBSD over the last few years so I think the hardware itself is okay.

Iirc I just used the 9.2.2 Universal Installer from this site for my G3 B/W and it runs flawless.
(at least I never used a machine specific installer on it)
It's also a revision 2 board - I'd trash any version 1 immediately and get another G3/4 system instead.

You may check your Ram modules. Some fit in and pretend to work, but may have hidden 'features'. Dunno if memory slots are organized in pairs, but that could have an influence if 'non matching' Dimms are inserted.
(I have some double sided Dimms where only half of the chips is adressed)

For simplicity put in the bare minimum and setup a stable system.
Then add more memory in steps and check for flaws/errors.

[Europa]

This may be a coincidence BUT…

We are currently having an almost identical issue with another B&W and 9.2.1 here:

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,4845.msg34786/topicseen.html#new

Similar issue: Almost finished boot, then a hang. His B&W has a Yikes! motherboard.
I am about to learn where the other guy's 9.2.1 came from. Although he says it's a CD, it may well be a CD burned from the same image…
You may want to follow the other thread as well.

These are some good points. What image from this site did you use to install 9.2.1? Also, what does the cursor look like when it finishes starting up?

[8bitSheep]

Hello again,

Thanks for the responses everyone. I have been away the last few days so only got some time to spend investigating this issue last night. The good news is that I found out which extension is causing my problem (after sooo many reboots): it is one called "QuickTime PowerPlug".

According to the description of this extension it enables faster QuickTime performance when using a PowerPC processor. As far as I am aware the G3 is a PowerPC processor so I have no idea why this would fail

Anyway, with this extension disabled the system boots up and acts normally, except that I get a post boot dialog box warning me that the QuickTime VR extension failed to load. If I also disable that extension I get a different warning that the QuickTime VR Authoring extension failed to load (I think that is what it said). However, I cannot find an extension that matches that description to disable it.

I saw that there is a newer version of QuickTime available for OS 9.2.1 (v6.0.3) so I will try to locate a copy of that and see if updating my installation of QuickTime resolves the issues.

Another thing I may try putting the original graphics card back in, we'll see.

When I got the machine (bought it from ebay a few years ago) it came with an install of OS 8 or 9 (complete with previous owners files) that I played around with briefly before swapping the drive for a Linux install. I don't remember seeing any errors when I played with the previous Mac OS install so I may put the old drive back in and see what versions of OS and QuickTime seem to work and the state of the extensions as a point of reference.


GaryN: thanks for the link to the other thread, I will check it out.

Astroman: In fact I did originally try the 9.2.2 OS image but found the same behaviour. I reverted to the OS 9.2.1 image as (as far as I understand) the 9.2.2 image was put together by the community whereas the 9.2.1 image was the official release from Apple. I thought going with the official Apple image would be more likely to work or at least maybe narrow down the issue. No such luck though.

The machine has been working with with Linux and OpenBSD the last few years  so I think the hardware should be okay but I may see if I can find a memory test to run.

RogerWilco: Regarding the image for 9.2.1, I downloaded it from the link in this thread:
http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,808.0.html

Thanks again for the help.

8bitSheep.

[GaryN]

I saw that there is a newer version of QuickTime available for OS 9.2.1 (v6.0.3) so I will try to locate a copy of that and see if updating my installation of QuickTime resolves the issues.

Quicktime 6.0.3 will very likely solve your issue.

[Europa]

Ok, awesome! I'm glad you solved the issue. 

[8bitSheep]

Hi again,

Thought I would post a quick follow up in case it helps anyone in the future.

With the work-around of disabling some extensions the machine was usable but without QuickTime many of the other programs failed to work (DVD player, Graphic Calculator etc.) so it wasn't ideal as it really limited what I could do with the machine.

I updated to QuickTime v6.0.3 to see if that would help but unfortunately it did not make any difference.

However, last night I had some free time and so I swapped out the ATI Radeon 9200LE for the ATI Rage 128 that the machine originally shipped with and all the problems disappeared. So, it seems that the 9200LE graphics card is not quite compatible with Mac OS 9.2.1 or at least not compatible with QuickTime under Mac OS 9.2.1.

Anyway, it seems to be fully working now so that is great. Thanks to all here for the help.

8bitSheep

[Europa]

That's interesting. I found this page a while back and it looks like the 9200 does not support OS 9.

http://themacelite.wikidot.com/compatibility

I'm glad you found a workaround