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[efunc]

Hi all,

I really need your help talking me through this. I have a Power Mac 9600/350 which has been a host for my Digidesign Pro Tools Mix system for the past 25 years.

I just switched it on yesterday and there's definitely power as the internal drives spin up (I have about 4 I think) and chug away for a minute or so, but the screen remains black and there's no actual start up chime as far as I can tell. The ADB keyboard also doesn't light up if I press caps lock or anything. I left it like this for half an hour but no boot activity beyond just powering up.

It's a long time since I did any trouble shooting on this machine, so where should I start? Clearly there's power, but it's not booting, or even loading the ROM. Does it sound like a motherboard problem? I couldn't even get it to boot off a CD, but the internal CD ROM was replaced by a Plextor CDR, so don't know if that supports boot up or not.

What should I try first? And what are the notable key combos I need to know?

Any advice is welcome.

Thanks!

[IIO]

there is a state of PCs which i would call not enough power.

for example if only a part of the PSU broke, or if it is close before dead, you would see something like that.

[FBz]

There’s a G3 here exhibiting similar behavior. Initial boot attempt of this “cold” machine results with no chime, fan powering up and no video (black screen). Not left “running” here for long period of time in this state.

However, waiting 15-30 seconds, power the machine down and then attempt to reboot it. Usually, on the 2nd or 3rd reboot attempt here, this machine boots and then runs fine for extended periods of time (hours with no fail, even after sleeping and being awakened).

(I hear someone whispering the PSU pre-heat “hair dryer trick”.) Might try that?

But as IIO has stated, the PSU may be ”close before dead” (i.e. near failure) BUT - if you can get it to boot (as noted above) run Disk First Aid to see if any problems with the OS or HD itself might be discovered and repaired.

It does sound like a near-failing PSU. But... wiggle, check and clean all connections, especially the PSU connection to the mobo.

There have also been three instances of various machines (this week alone) having similar no-boot conditions due to time-tarnished or oxidized pin connections not making proper contact with motherboards and or CPUs.

Fresh battery? If so and all above fails… maybe time to contact Andy for PSU service?

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php/topic,4077.0.html

[efunc]

Thank you both, much appreciated. The power supply suggestion seems plausible, so I'll investigate further. For a number of years now the mac has been taking longer and longer to boot up, but usually sitting on the grey screen before stalling, so I thought it might be struggling to find the boot blocks or something. Usually a couple of attempts and some patient waiting would get it to finally boot and run without problem. However this time it's not even getting as far as any video signal at all. I looked up the hairdryer trick and found this link: https://www.instructables.com/Fix-a-dead-power-supply-using-a-Hair-Dryer-Reflow/ which seems insane, but no harm in trying this.

Other wild stabs in the dark: Motherboard battery? I don't know how long these last, but possibly worth replacing? Cuder Switch? Does this model have one, or was that the G4s? Pram, or is that just clutching at straws?

I've found someone selling an old 9600 power supply on eBay, but they want a crazy £150! I remember when you could get the whole computer for £10, if not for free..

[robespierre]

Long "warm up" times needed before operating are a sign of faulty electrolytic capacitors. If they are dried out (evaporated electrolyte), they go "high ESR", which makes them take longer to charge, as well as having worse voltage smoothing ability.
Heating with a heat gun/hair dryer indicates the area of the fault, but it is not a fix. The fix is to replace them.

[FBz]

Yes.

But before replacing one with a used £150 one… there must be a source in the U.K. to possibly have yours refurbished / recapped (for less than £150?). AND should you find such a source for that service in the U.K., please post that info and your review of the service... for our other members in and closer to the U.K.

And as far as “reflowing solder” inside the PSU (and you’ve already removed the PSU to do so) might as well do the visual check of the capacitors inside. Even though not all failed (or failing) capacitors will exhibit visual signs of failure (i.e. swollen, bulging or domed tops, OR leaking).

*If unaware of stored high voltage potential inside some capacitors, be very careful and don't "poke around" too much inside the PSU.

“Hair dryer trick” (as often mentioned here by DieHard) is more of a “pre-heating” approach for failing capacitors. Not as a higher-heat attempted, heat gun “re-flow” of solder.

Considering your progressively longer boot times - it is very likely the PSU. (Yet a new battery couldn’t hurt, even if you do need PSU refurb service after all.)

Money spent on an original (still working) PSU might postpone a refurb service - but ultimately at its’ age - it too will likely, eventually need servicing too. So add that possibility into your “total cost” of a used one.

And PEAK (in England) offers an ESR70, atlas ESR+ meter that you can source in the U.K. for less than we can here in the U.S. (If you’re inclined to remove, test and replace your own PSU capacitors.)

Best of luck.

[Bolkonskij]

I don't have any repair tip, though I'm crossing fingers for you! And I hope the 9600's PSU isn't anything like the repair-unfriendly 8600's PSU. Enclosing two screenshots. First, the whole layout is super complicated. Second, thanks to the extensive copper plating the heat dissipates faster than you can add it with the soldering iron. To make things worse, all the caps seem glued in.

I couldn't fix that myself, anyhow. Asked a recap service that managed fixing even one of those dreaded G4 MDD PSUs for me - "no thanks, can't do" was the answer.

So good luck! Let me know if you find someone reliable, please!

[efunc]

Thanks for all the great advice in this thread. Due to other emergencies I didn't have time to investigate things much further until now, however after a little search I have found a replacement PSU in the UK for around £40 delivered:

https://www.applemacparts.co.uk/power-mac-9600-8600-power-supply

It says it's "Serviced - Product has been fully serviced and tested" which in my mind suggests it's just 'as is' and not reconditioned. However this may be the best I can do right now.

For someone with little experience am I right in thinking I should be able to safely remove the existing and replace with this PSU armed with just a screwdriver?? ie there are no particular hazards to worry about if I'm not actually striping the PSU down right? And is accessibility an issue, or is it a case of hard drives, fans and everything else out to do the swap?

Thanks, (if anyone has experience of this model)!

[FBz]

Looks simple / straightforward enough...

https://www.macspecialist.org/power-macintosh-8600-9600-ws-9650/power-supply-1.html

No longer have one here. But someone else may care to comment.

[efunc]

That's a very handy guide, thanks!
I guess I'll go ahead and order that PSU.

[efunc]

Arrgh..

Replacement (serviced) PSU arrived from the link posted previously. I spent the afternoon stripping the machine down and swapping out the PSUs. Unfortunately no change in behaviour! ie, on power up all the drives spin up, there's no start up chime and the display just remains black.

I realise that once I've eliminated the low hanging fruit I'm in pretty deep troubleshooting territory, and I don't have the knowledge or time for that But I would REALLY like to get my machine back because of the amount of in-progress projects that are on it.

So, I'm guessing it might even be a duff logic board, but what are the next 'simple' solutions I could explore? Internal battery? Bad RAM? In either scenario I would have expected some kind of startup chime or firmware warning on the monitor, so I'm a bit perplexed.

[FBz]

Sorry to hear this. Here comes the kitchen sink approach...

Sure, check voltage on the battery - when was it last replaced? Easy enough to install a new one.

RAM check? Take out all except bare minimum and try reboot. Adding back one at a time if it does boot.

You did check that you reconnected everything after the PSU re-install?

Monitor / video checks out okay? Tried swapping monitors and testing current one with another machine? (BUT you’d think it would chime - even if it were a video problem?) However if the video card has failed…

Re-seat ALL cards inside. If that makes no difference, then you might consider removing all but the minimum / absolutely necessary for basic function cards and try it all again. [Couple of weeks ago there was a run on bad, oxidized or simply time-tarnished connections with cards, RAM and even HD connections… with at least four people that I know of.]

AND before any of the above… that thing still has a floppy drive? Maybe attempt to boot from a Norton Utilities floppy or basic system disc? (as you’re unsure of your Plextor). Also could try an external drive if you’ve one bootable, around.

Of course with four internal drives, and considering their possible age / mileage… well, one could be…  (well you know).

Had the machine been sitting un-used and non-booted for an extended period of time? Made any recent changes or hardware additions to the machine?

That’s all I got. Anybody else???

Check this: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1324253  PRAM / CUDA

[DieHard]

Yeah... good advise FBz...

then you might consider removing all but the minimum / absolutely necessary for basic function cards and try it all again.

Yes, literally unplug every data cable and every power cable (except logic board) and remove all add-on boards, so basically you are testing a Mac Tower with a video card only, then see if it chimes and gives you a flashing folder on screen

[Syntho]

If there's one thing I hate reading about on these forums, it's about a sick 9600. I would unplug every single thing from the computer. All cables inside and out, all PCI cards, all ram, the CPU card, etc and re-seat everything. Actually, only plug in the barebones to have it working which should be the CPU, a single stick of RAM (has to be big enough), motherboard power cable, HD power+ribbon, ADB keyboard/mouse, video card, and I think that's it. Let us know how that goes.

[refinery]

Also be sure to try swapping out the single stick of ram you use for a test... There's always that chance it's just *that* one you happen to use. Also, try different slots if possible.

[PowerFinnrich]

Writing this from my own 9600/350 PowerMacintosh, I want to say that I had a problem like this myself with this machine, so maybe I can help you.
The PPC wasn't used for a decade, and it had problems with booting from the startup disk - it would show a black screen as for you too. Fortunately, I still could boot the Mac, because there was a second HD with OS9 installed which was recognized by the system as I restarted and pressed the key combination for other startup disk. Maybe you also have a second hard disk with Mac OS installed?
Obviously, the main startup disk had big issues, so the only way I could solve this problem was to erase and reformat the whole harddisk.

So if it will not help for you to plug out all devices from the Mac, you could have the same problem. Strange that you cannot boot from CD. Maybe it is a special drive that has its own driver software?

Good luck with getting up again your PowerMacintosh!

[efunc]

Thank you, thank you and thank you all.

I've been reading and following all the advice carefully, but been unable to try much or respond. The last couple of days I've begun a complete disassembly which is always a challenge.

1 First I swapped out the battery - no change. (the old battery and the new one showed the same voltage when I tested them, but I understand that can be deceptive)

2 Removed all 4 Digidesign PCI cards and Firewire/USB card - no change

3 Disconnected power to two internal drives leaving just the CD, Floppy and one drive - no change

4 Removed 4 RAM SIMMS, leaving 4 in place - no change

5 Removed another 2 SIMMS - finally starts with chime! However still no video signal at all, not even grey screen.

I will leave it powered for an hour to see if it springs to life, but some progress at least! The earlier comment about the video card being bad is valid, but I have no way to test that right now. I'll have to look into this next. Otherwise it's probably time to throw in the towel because there's only so much left to do. I found the original System CD, but since I swapped out the Apple CD Drive in the 9600 for a Plextor it won't boot up from it, and I don't think I ever had a boot up floppy. Some more troubleshooting...

[Mat]

Now that you have a chime, don´t trow in the towel!
Did you try to reset the PRam after you got the chime? Usually this helps getting the display back. Also using the CUDA switch like FBz suggested may help. Finally, did you have a look at the electrolytic capacitors at your motherboard? Do they look broken?

[FBz]

Yes by all means, zap that PRAM and if no-go afterwards… then CUDA, baby.

Pay little attention to what follows here (but some) as it may just be a lot of blabber… Tax Day here for me / and up since 4 a.m. I am now going to take a looong nap!

As you did at least get a chime with two sticks of RAM in, that does sound promising. Don’t know what the bare minimum of necessary RAM is for that machine. (If you listen carefully you can hear me whispering Syntho’s name here, three times in a row like “Beetlejuice”.) Syntho said “a single stick of RAM”. (But also: “has to be big enough”.)

And yet while I have never attempted this (and some may actually scream at the mere mention of this) I might try to “clean” all of the RAM slots with a pipe cleaner, slowly, saturated with some liquid contact cleaner or 91% isopropyl alcohol. Of course, with all power bled from the machine and unplugged (press that power button many times with the thing unplugged) AND maybe even with the logic board removed from the machine. Don’t think that simply spraying contact cleaner into the slots themselves would do the trick alone. But you could try that before resorting to insane pipe cleaner routine. AND if you do use pipe cleaners… only very lightly, very slowly and very carefully in each RAM slot. Static IS ALWAYS the enemy and cleaners must be moist. DO THIS ONLY AT YOUR OWN RISK.

Possible dust, smoke, fur balls and tarnish / oxidation after all of these years… inside those slots. And then there’s always the multiple contacts on each RAM stick to consider and to clean as well. (Card slots too.)

As for the questionable-function video card. Which card is in it now? And if someone (like Syntho, refinery, PowerFinnrich or other 9600 owners here) would care to speak up about which particular video cards might work, I can check my stock here to see if maybe a replacement could be offered for what you now have.

LowEndMac notes that the 9600’s shipped with the ixMicro TwinTurbo video card (which I believe I have in my 9500 along with some “other” basic ATI card). So there may be some “extras” of that type around here. *This is where we normally discover that you’re not located in the U.S. and shipping becomes a concern.

Uh-ohh, reading back through all of this, you mentioned a PSU for £150 (so you’re U.K.). Any other members here in the U.K. with a 9600? I could still send a video card but an external SCSI HD or CD drive is priced right out of that equation.

“If there's one thing I hate reading about on these forums, it's about a sick 9600.” -Syntho

Go ahead, say his name three times, out loud in quick succession.

That single chime screamed “not quite dead yet”!!!!

[Mat]

The 9600 can work with just a single RAM slot in use.
Just interlevaing is not verry well than

Also I´d say the minimum RAM that is needed depends on the OS. For the 300 and 350MHz versions of the 9600 the minimum OS is 7.6.1 (for slower versions 7.5.5). So it should work well with 16MB installed in one slot. Or 64MB with Mac OS 9.1.

I´d be extremely careful with "contact stuff" better clean with IPA, that is often used at PCBs (I did it myselve several times).

Regarding the video cards, virtually any Mac PCI videocard is working well. I used myselve in my 9600 an ATI Rage 128, TwinTurbo 8MB, ATI 7000, VillageTronic MacPicasso 540, an 3dfx Voodoo 5500, and an ATI 9200.