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Author Topic: Debugging the Power Mac 9600 G4  (Read 18278 times)

GorfTheChosen

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Re: Debugging the Power Mac 9600 G4
« Reply #20 on: March 18, 2020, 06:36:36 PM »

You seem to be doing more diagnostics and burn-in testing than even the engineers did at Apple years ago  :-*

If so, that ain't saying much ...  ;D
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GorfTheChosen

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Re: Debugging the Power Mac 9600 G4
« Reply #21 on: March 18, 2020, 06:51:26 PM »

Was testing out Retro and the Sony DAT on the Gigabit machine (under OS X 10.4.11) with the Adaptec 2906 card I stuck in it ... all sorts of errors on compare after back up ... to the point that the back up/compare would not complete in any kind of a reasonable time.

Made sure I had the latest drivers from Adaptec installed ... still no go.

Tried swapping out the SCSI cable for different one ... nada.

Finally moved the drive over to the 9600's external SCSI bus and did a couple of back ups (> 1 gig) under OS 9 ... no errors.

Later ran across a post somewhere that said the drivers for the 2906 (and possibly the 2930, since they use the same kext) are not compatible with anything later than 10.3.9.  Had previously run into some posts (somewhere) that said OS 10.4.9 and/or 10.4.10 had broken the drivers for some of Adaptec cards.

Still need to retest it on the 9600 using the cable that I was using on the Gigabit ... just to eliminate the cable as a possibility.
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ssp3

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Re: Debugging the Power Mac 9600 G4
« Reply #22 on: March 18, 2020, 09:31:15 PM »

I'd suggest you check the web archive more often before conducting various old PCI card experiments  ;)

http://web.archive.org/web/20120415194823/http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/support/scsi/2900/ava-2906/
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GorfTheChosen

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Re: Debugging the Power Mac 9600 G4
« Reply #23 on: March 19, 2020, 02:08:12 AM »

I'd suggest you check the web archive more often before conducting various old PCI card experiments  ;)

http://web.archive.org/web/20120415194823/http://www.adaptec.com/en-us/support/scsi/2900/ava-2906/

Yeah ... been there already, done that before embarking ...

What would you have me "check" exactly ?

There's no definitive statement of incompatibility there with later operating systems that I saw.

And, if I'm not mistaken, the "supported operating systems" roughly corresponds to Adaptec product development on the Mac ... to the point in time where they threw in the towel and discontinued developing drivers for Mac completely.

« Last Edit: March 19, 2020, 02:41:27 AM by GorfTheChosen »
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GorfTheChosen

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Re: Debugging the Power Mac 9600 G4
« Reply #24 on: May 12, 2020, 03:46:17 AM »

Some progress to report on the 9600:

Managed to get it to boot Mac OS X 10.4.11 using XPostFacto4.

Had to do the install of 10.4 on an IDE drive (Maxtor 60GB) in a mobile rack carrier connected to the Quicksilver G4 800 Dual via FW. Went ahead and used Software Update to apply all the Apple OS and Security updates while still attached to the Quicksilver.

Then moved the mobile rack to the 9600 and inserted it in the receiver which was attached to IDE Channel 1 on an ACARD AEC-6260M PCI host adapter. Used XPF4 to apply the necessary components there and successfully boot into 10.4.11.

Parameters were 1. to make sure the install was done to the first partition on the drive, 2. the partition was less than 8GB in size, 3. the L2 Cache checkbox in XPF4 was unchecked (L2 Cache NOT enabled during boot) and 4. the speed during boot was set to 8 ... although I've since slowed it down even further to 10.

After doing that and getting it to boot successfully, I partitioned the OWC Mercury 3G SSD - which is connected to the ACARD AEC6260M IDE Channel 2 with a red Startech IDE to SATA adapter - to comply with the "less than 8GB partition rule" and used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone the boot partition off the Maxtor drive onto the first partition on the SSD.

That booted successfully as well ... so booting off IDE Channel 2 certainly seems like it works (I heard heard something to the contrary)

I then used CCC to clone the OS X boot partition on the SSD onto its 5th partition - which is almost 40GB into the SSD - to see if that would boot. It did ... so apparently using IDE host adapter resolves the "must be in the first 8GB rule" ...

Overall, it seems pretty stable so far ... obviously the performance is slower compared to the other machines here and the video redraw can be a little laggy at times ... but seems respectable given the capabilities of the machine.

Am having an issue with file copy performance across the network via the Gigabit NIC ... but I suspect that might be a driver related issue (or possibly a bad Cat 5e cable)

More to report later.
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GorfTheChosen

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Re: Debugging the Power Mac 9600 G4
« Reply #25 on: December 27, 2024, 08:49:37 PM »

Much later as it turns out ...  :o

After a hiatus of several years ... time for an update on this saga.

Got back into this about a week or so ago.

Somewhere along the way the Tiger installation got pooched so had to reinstall.

Somehow managed to do that and get it updated via Software Update to 10.4.11.

Made another attempt to install 10.4 on another partition and it failed.

Had all sorts of problems with the ATTO card initially. Computer would not boot into either OS 9 or OS X unless something was attached to the card.

Once I did attach a 4 bay Fast and Wide external cabinet with 4 IBM drives inside it, the computer did boot up (into both OS 9 and OS X) … but the ATTO card refused to see the drives.

Swapped out the ATTO card for an Adaptec Power Domain 2940UW, booted into OS 9 … and immediately all drives showed up … which allowed me to format and wipe them.

Swapped out the PRAM battery with another one I had on hand since the computer kept losing it’s Time and Date setting every time I disconnected power. Turns out the replacement battery was dead as well.

Ordered some new PRAM batteries from the Borg and stuck a new fresh one in yesterday after checking it with a multimeter.

Once that was done I hooked up the VXA tape drive to the ATTO card and the Sony SDT-9000 DAT to the external bus on the 9600 and attempted to do a couple of restores using Retrospect 5 using both devices.

That resulted in hard lockups of the computer every time I tried it.

At that point I had finally had enough and pulled the Sonnet G4/450 processor card out and swapped in the original Apple 350 MHz “High Performance Processor Card” that came with the machine.

Did two restores totaling about 35 GB from three different VXA tapes which proceeded flawlessly.

I did also try a restore over the network to a 240 GB partition on an SSD in the G5 that I had mounted on the 9600 desktop … but it failed after some time, with Retro complaining that it had trouble writing to the drive.   

Since then I have managed to restore (I think) all tape backups on VXA and DAT ... probably over 20 tapes total ... although I do have another 20 or so in the archives I need to check. Both tape drives seem to be working flawlessly ... in OS 9 with the original processor card installed.

Looking like it is going to be an “OS 9 only” machine at this point. And that's fine.

Although I may give OS X another whirl with the other Sonnet processor card just to see if it was something specific to that card ...   ::)
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GorfTheChosen

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Re: Debugging the Power Mac 9600 G4
« Reply #26 on: December 27, 2024, 08:52:32 PM »

One other interesting find:

The small Tango eSATA drive enclosures from acomdata work fine on the G5 connected to the Firmtek SeriTek/2SE4 card (firmware 5.3.0) in Tiger ... but are unreliable on the 9600 in OS 9 or OS X with the Firmtek SeriTek/1SE2 ... using either the 5.3.1 or the 5.1.3 firmware.

That was tested with both an old 2.5" rust spinner and a OWC Mercury Electra 3G SSD from OWC.

The drives initially mount and appear to work for awhile ... and then they go into a condition where they stop responding/writing data ... despite the drive light constantly flickering.

Usually after this happens the drives will not mount again  on the 9600 ... until I take them over to the G5 and mount them there. After that they will mount again on the 9600.

Check them with Disk Utility on the G5 and usually no issues reported after one of these episodes.

Take the drives out of the Tango cases and connect directly to the SeriTek/1SE2 on the 9600 and zero issues ... have written literally 100's of data to them restoring backups from tape.

These cases are supposed to good with SATA II but I suspect that there is something about their backwards compatibility to SATA I that the SeriTek/1SE2 doesn't like.

So I'll look for a different drive case and see if that works any better.
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