Can a bad hard drive stop a PowerBook G4 from booting?

[Pedro Passamani]

Hello everybody. This is going to be a long story, so please bear with me!

Recently I took a gamble on an untested 15" Aluminum PowerBook that was up for sale on my local eBay equivalent. The listing had no specs whatsoever, just a few photos of the PowerBook itself (they showed that it had a few scratches, but nothing that a good clean could not take care of), but since I had been wanting to get a 15" for a while (already have the 12" and 17" models), and it was cheap (the equivalent to 20 US dollars), I went for it.

The PowerBook arrived yesterday and guess what, I got lucky! It's a DLSD, A1138. As soon as it arrived I went to test it. It came without a charger, so I grabbed a 45W unit from one of my G4 iBooks. Although the charging indicator turned green (the battery is dead, as expected), it didn't turn on. I then tried a 65W adapter from a 17" PowerBook, and... it turned on! But, this was the furthest that I got... Upon turning on, it didn't chime, and got stuck on a white screen. No Apple logo, no prohibitory sign, no question mark, no nothing.

I could hear the hard drive seeking, but after 30 seconds or so, it stopped. I tried to leave it on for a few minutes to see what was going to happen, but after about 5 minutes it rebooted itself and did the same thing again.

I then tried to boot into the boot picker, and it worked. It showed no bootable partitions, so I tried putting in a known good retail Tiger installation DVD (I know the DLSD needs 10.4.2, but I wanted to see if it could at least read the disc). Like the hard drive, I could hear the DVD drive working, but it also didn't show up.

I tried zapping the PRAM, but it made no difference.

So, my question for you guys is, can a bad hard drive stop a PowerBook from booting, even from a disc, or is it more likely that my PowerBook has some kind of issue? I know that I can just open it up and remove the hard drive to see, but wheres the fun in that?

Thanks!

Edit: TLDR, PowerBook has a bad hard drive. Doesn't chime and gets stuck on a white screen. Tried booting from a known good DVD copy of Tiger and it didn't work. Boot Picker doesn't show the hard drive nor the DVD.

 

[TheShortTimer]

So, my question for you guys is, can a bad hard drive stop a PowerBook from booting, even from a disc...

Yes - it can stop a PowerBook, Macs as a whole and computers in general.

I know that I can just open it up and remove the hard drive to see, but wheres the fun in that?

It would drastically reduce the process of elimination...

 

[MarkC426]

I then tried to boot into the boot picker, and it worked. It showed no bootable partitions, so I tried putting in a known good retail Tiger installation DVD (I know the DLSD needs 10.4.2, but I wanted to see if it could at least read the disc). Like the hard drive, I could hear the DVD drive working, but it also didn't show up.

Do you have a clone from your other PB's you could boot the 15" with...?
I have mine cloned to a Lacie FW drive.

 

[ojfd]

Try pressing the power button and keep holding it until you hear start-up chime. This resets PMU. Maybe this will help.

 

[Pedro Passamani]

Yes - it can stop a PowerBook, Macs as a whole and computers in general.

Noted. I've always assumed that the system would try to boot from the internal drive first, and then try the other available options (or at least show them on the boot picker) when it failed to do so, but I guess that's not case. Good to know!

It would drastically reduce the process of elimination...

Yes, for sure. I'm going to replace the drive, but I just wanted to see if you guys had any advice or some Open Firmware/FireWire (I have an external FW drive and a few other Macs for Target Disk Mode that I could use) hackery for me to try. I love to tinker with these old machines and try the more obscure stuff.

Thanks very much for your reply!

 

[ojfd]

Try the usual in OF:

reset-nvram

 

[eyoungren]

My first thought is logicboard. But I have a habit of always jumping to that. So lets see what replacing the HD will do for it.

Also, I'd just mention that the reason your 65W adapter worked and your 45W adapter did not is because the 15" and 17" Aluminum PowerBook G4s use 65W. The 12" PBs use 45W.

 

[Pedro Passamani]

Do you have a clone from your other PB's you could boot the 15" with...?
I have mine cloned to a Lacie FW drive.

Yes, in fact I do! I'm gonna pull out my old FW drive to try. I know it's silly, but this PowerBook got me really intrigued, and I want to try other solutions before taking the drive out. Just to play around a little and learn new things about these machines.

 

[Pedro Passamani]

Try pressing the power button and keep holding it until you hear start-up chime. This resets PMU. Maybe this will help.

Try the usual in OF:

reset-nvram

Thanks! I'll try both and see how it goes.

 

[Pedro Passamani]

Also, I'd just mention that the reason your 65W adapter worked and your 45W adapter did not is because the 15" and 17" Aluminum PowerBook G4s use 65W. The 12" PBs use 45W.

Thanks! Another thing that I didn't know. I've always thought the 45W could power a 15" or 17", but with the caveat of not being able to keep them on and charge the battery at the same time.

 

[for this]

Noted. I've always assumed that the system would try to boot from the internal drive first, and then try the other available options (or at least show them on the boot picker) when it failed to do so, but I guess that's not case. Good to know!

I've had this kind of problem before. If the drive is completely dead, like there is no drive attached, then it should boot OK.

But sometimes it's not like that. I had to remove the drive, unless it wouldn't boot.

My theory is if the drive still has some life in it, e.g., still has electrical connectivities, the Mac will have to wait for the drive (that will not come). Even if that drive is not the boot drive, the Mac still has to have it presented if it senses the drive's connection. And because it's internal, not USB or FW, the Mac can't skip it and gets stuck.

 

[Pedro Passamani]

Hey guys, I'm back. So, I tried all the suggestions, but to no avail. I then tried an old external FireWire drive that I have, but the PowerBook just wouldn't see it, including the boot picker, even though the drive worked just fine with other Macs.

After that, I tried Target Disk Mode, connecting the PowerBook to an iBook G4 running Tiger. System Profiler on the iBook could see that a Target Disk device was connected, but the hard drive itself did not show up.

Now, I know this is silly, that I could just take the drive out and be done with it, but I decided to try one last thing before doing so: NetBoot (and NetInstall).

I'd been wanting to try Mac OS X Server and NetInstall/NetBoot for a while, but never got around to doing so, until now. I installed a copy of Tiger Server Universal (10.4.7) on a Power Mac G4 and started playing with it's options. I ended up creating two images, one for NetBoot and another for NetInstall. I enabled both, set the NetBoot one as the default, and turned on the PowerBook while holding the "N" key. The PowerBook sat on the NetBoot screen for a few seconds and voilà, Mac OS X started booting! With the NetBoot image I got as far as the login screen, but the system froze while trying to load the desktop.

I then tried the NetInstall image, and it worked first try. After a few seconds I reached the installer, and finally could verify the PowerBook's specs (it's indeed a DLSD, with 1.5 GB of DDR2 RAM).

Surprisingly, both System Profiler and Disk Utility were able to see the hard drive, a Toshiba 80 GB unit. I tried erasing it, but the system froze during the process, confirming for this' theory that the drive is bad, but not to a degree where the system wouldn't detect it and thus skip it during booting.

So, now we know (or at least I do) that a bad hard drive can indeed stop a PowerBook from booting (and even affect the booting process in general, preventing external drives and optical media from being detected), and I found out how fun and useful Mac OS X Server (NetBoot in particular) can be.

I've ordered an mSATA to IDE adapter, which should be arriving soon, and I'll finally replace the hard drive.

Hope you guys liked this saga. Thanks for all the info.

TLDR: Used Mac OS X Server's NetInstall feature to confirm that indeed the hard drive was affecting the PowerBook's booting process.

 

[B S Magnet]

I then tried the NetInstall image, and it worked first try. After a few seconds I reached the installer, and finally could verify the PowerBook's specs (it's indeed a DLSD, with 1.5 GB of DDR2 RAM).

The other way you would be able to know, without even powering it on or opening it, that it was a DLSD: look underneath on the bottom for those magical alphanumerics, “A1138”

When you open it, the next way to know you have a DLSD: look for the ribbon cable with a sticker which reads “FOR POWERBOOK G4 1.67GHz OR HIGHER”. Only the DLSD models featured that.

 

[DearthnVader]

Take note that it could also be the ATA ribbon cabling that is bad, but likely replacing the HD will resolve the issue.

Could be the DVD drive is dead too, or the failed HD is just blocking the bus.

Does the DLSD have one ATA bus or two?

At any rate, while you are waiting for the HD to come in, you can put the Tiger DVD back in and boot into OF to see if it can read the disk:

dir cd:,\

 

[B S Magnet]

Does the DLSD have one ATA bus or two?

One: the hard drive is “unit 0” (main) and the DVD-R is “unit 1” (secondary).

 

[DearthnVader]

One: the hard drive is “unit 0” (main) and the DVD-R is “unit 1” (secondary).

Ok, thanks, likely the failed HD is blocking the bus causing the DVD not to function properly as well.

Could still be a bad cable, or the DVD could be failing as well, but likely it's just the HD.

 

[Amethyst1]

One: the hard drive is “unit 0” (main) and the DVD-R is “unit 1” (secondary).

Kudos for not using the old terminology.

 

[B S Magnet]

Kudos for not using the old terminology.

I detest, even utterly despise the put-to-pasture terminology which deserves to rot in the ground. 🔥

 

[TheShortTimer]

Kudos for not using the old terminology.

Quite! It took me a second to realise (and appreciate) what @B S Magnet had done.

I detest, even utterly despise the put-to-pasture terminology which deserves to rot in the ground. 🔥

Same here, particularly on personalised historical grounds.