Bugs in Mac Pro?

[Glen Quagmire]

A very interesting bit of reading
I hope Apple has worked through the issues with Intel, or we might end up with new Rev B machines at their expense. Not that that is bad for us, but it will mean downtime, and cause for some alarm if there are precision related problems as well.

This "interesting reading" being sharikou, the anti-Intel zealot?

 

[danhig123]

Hey all!

I am jubulant!

Yesterday I posted on here that I had fan noise problems with my Mac Pro. I was devistated to have recieved a dodgy unit. The noises were a humming and a clicking noise which when I wrang tech support, was told it was a known issue to do with the hard drive.

I narrowed the problem down, discovering that is i applied pressure to the top of the unit the noises stopped. And that got me thinking. It couldnt possibly be a hard drive noise. The hard drives are too far away from the top of the casing to be affected by light pressure. The noise had to be the PSU fan!

So I opened the computer up... (blissfully easily I may add 😉 ) And removed the Superdrive bay.

The problem was so simple to solve it was laughable. The ribbon cable from the superdrive was buzzing against the fan! A slight design error which I imagine would rarely cause a problem. Simply re seating the ribbon cable has fixed my problem! No replacement machine needed!

Now all I need to do is ring tech support to cancle the new order!

Result!

Danny

 

[mistafreeze]

you really think apple would give us new machines if there were problems? and by new, i mean updated rev b machines, not the same ones we already got.

 

[amin]

A very interesting bit of reading
I hope Apple has worked through the issues with Intel, or we might end up with new Rev B machines at their expense. Not that that is bad for us, but it will mean downtime, and cause for some alarm if there are precision related problems as well.

There is no precedent for that. Closely look at the site G5freeze.com. If there are significant issues with any new Apple, we may be out of luck, just like those poor single 1.8GHz G5/600MHz FSB folks. Apple showed me they aren't the good guys when they screwed those people. My Dells have had way better customer service than Apple. When my Powerbook broke, I had to jump through hoops to get it fixed under Apple care. When my wife's Dell broke, there were no questions asked. Still, Apple makes the best stuff so I will continue to buy it.

 

[MacsAttack]

Hey all!

I am jubulant!

Yesterday I posted on here that I had fan noise problems with my Mac Pro. I was devistated to have recieved a dodgy unit. The noises were a humming and a clicking noise which when I wrang tech support, was told it was a known issue to do with the hard drive.

I narrowed the problem down, discovering that is i applied pressure to the top of the unit the noises stopped. And that got me thinking. It couldnt possibly be a hard drive noise. The hard drives are too far away from the top of the casing to be affected by light pressure. The noise had to be the PSU fan!

So I opened the computer up... (blissfully easily I may add 😉 ) And removed the Superdrive bay.

The problem was so simple to solve it was laughable. The ribbon cable from the superdrive was buzzing against the fan! A slight design error which I imagine would rarely cause a problem. Simply re seating the ribbon cable has fixed my problem! No replacement machine needed!

Now all I need to do is ring tech support to cancle the new order!

Result!

Danny

Good to hear.

About half the probles I've seen are user-correctable. It would be nice if they never poped up - but at least they can be resolved by reseating components or OS re-installation.

 

[MacsAttack]

A very interesting bit of reading
I hope Apple has worked through the issues with Intel

All CPUs have problems. Intel, AMD, IBM, you name it.

Work-arounds are usually patched into the microcode in the CPU via BIOS/Firmware updates.

This is where the switch to Intel works in our favour as there are many more sets of eyes looking at the CPUs and chip sets. Thus problems are more likley to the found and Intel is under more preasure to patch it (an/or release a new stepping of the processor).

The Core 2 Duo has been rushed out to market (think we are three to five months ahead of the first roadmaps). Despite this there appears to have been very few issues. Yet. That is the risk you run buyig into a brand new CPU/chipset like that found in the Mac Pro.

It would be interseting to know what stepping of woodcrest is being used in the Mac Pro. Not sure OS X can provide that information, but Windows XP lists it in the about dialogue as I recall.

Think the worst CPU problem I ever saw was Intel's first 1GHz Pentium. They rushed it out the door with a paper launch about the time AMD introdued their first 1 Ghz Athlons. The Intel chip proved so unstable that they pulled it from production. If Woodcrest had such problems I'm sure we would have seen something by now.

 

[relimw]

you really think apple would give us new machines if there were problems? and by new, i mean updated rev b machines, not the same ones we already got.

No, I meant updated motherboards, which would effectively be rev. b systems. I think it's extremely unlikely, but remember that Apple has given control over to Intel to design their motherboards. Presumably Apple has done all their own QA, and has disabled hardware RAID and other 'problems' that have been pointed out by Intel and 3rd parties.

 

[relimw]

Ot G5

If there are significant issues with any new Apple, we may be out of luck, just like those poor single 1.8GHz G5/600MHz FSB folks. Apple showed me they aren't the good guys when they screwed those people. My Dells have had way better customer service than Apple. When my Powerbook broke, I had to jump through hoops to get it fixed under Apple care. When my wife's Dell broke, there were no questions asked. Still, Apple makes the best stuff so I will continue to buy it.

Next you must have Mac OS X 10.4.0, 10.4.1 or 10.4.2 installed on your Power Mac G5/1.8 Single (late 2004). This problem does not exist under OS X 10.3.

Just something quick to address this. This would appear to strickly be an OS issue. Don't think for a minute that all Macs have never updated OSes and never had a problem. My G4 Dual 500 had a nasty problem when I updated once, totally clobbered all network capabilities, could't even print to our lan printer. It took quite a bit of time to convince Apple that they had indeed screwed up, but eventually they did fix the issue.

 

[Unorthodox]

How about cutting hard drive access times in half? That doing it for you?

I read an article in Maximum PC recently that said RAID (I can't remember the number. The one thats supposed to be faster) is actually slower on somethings, and the thing where it is faster, the performance gain is pretty small.

 

[admanimal]

I'm wondering... I originally thought (as watching that guy introduce Time Machine) that TM was just a RAID 1 setup with a clever software implementation, but now I'm wondering, what is it really? Just Leopard continually backing up your data to a external HDD (can you use a seconadry internal HDD) and keeping it organized for easy recover?

Time Machine isn't any kind of RAID, because as far as I understand, it can be used even if the machine only has one drive. It is really a CVS-like system, where old versions of files are automatically saved somewhere and can be checked out into your current file system when you want to "undelete" something.

 

[relimw]

All CPUs have problems. Intel, AMD, IBM, you name it.

Work-arounds are usually patched into the microcode in the CPU via BIOS/Firmware updates.

This is where the switch to Intel works in our favour as there are many more sets of eyes looking at the CPUs and chip sets. Thus problems are more likley to the found and Intel is under more preasure to patch it (an/or release a new stepping of the processor).

Absolutely agree with you.

The Core 2 Duo has been rushed out to market (think we are three to five months ahead of the first roadmaps). Despite this there appears to have been very few issues. Yet. That is the risk you run buyig into a brand new CPU/chipset like that found in the Mac Pro.
<snip>
Think the worst CPU problem I ever saw was Intel's first 1GHz Pentium. They rushed it out the door with a paper launch about the time AMD introdued their first 1 Ghz Athlons. The Intel chip proved so unstable that they pulled it from production. If Woodcrest had such problems I'm sure we would have seen something by now.

As I recall, one of the ones Intel screwed up, was the precision on one of the Pentiums and had to do a product recall for those that needed the correct precision. It was just a change in the stepping, so very limited recall.

 

[chatin]

Same old Apple roadblocks

I finally got the time to use mine to import HD video with final cut express and no go. Even with a high-end Sony FX1.

 

[chatin]

My mistake - the Mac Pro was perfect!

I finally got the time to use mine to import HD video with final cut express and no go. Even with a high-end Sony FX1.

My mistake, video editing is flawless. I had a setting in the Sony that forced a conversion to DV! Total user error! 😱

 

[MacsAttack]

Add another unidentified system failure to the list (think that gives us 2 DoA and 2 complete system failures).

Smoke beltching out the front after restatring the system (apparentl)...

Toasty! 😀

Of course there is currently no way of kowing if these system failures are the result of the owner doing something monumentally stupid.

Now... if somebody would get around to delivering my Mac Pro...

 

[brikeh]

MacPro...ooooh I want one so bad. 🙁

 

[MacsAttack]

Oh - and some people have had peoblems with their UPS not working - The Mac Pro pulls more current and trips a circuit breaker in the UPS apparently.

Solution - Need bigger UPS!

Not a bug. Just a result of the ever-increasing pwer requirments of top-end systems.