Dead PRAM Battery causing failed startup?

[bamaworks]

Hello all, one of my Al Powerbooks decided to kernel panic twice in the past two days and both times fail to start up afterwards. The symptoms would be that when I pushed the power button, I wouldn't hear the Apple startup sound and it would just sit there.

Well, after a few tries and some sadness, I decided to remove the PRAM battery card and voila, computer boots up perfectly! This has actually happened twice (removed PRAM card, booted up, then put PRAM card back in, then eventually exact same situation occurred again), does anyone know if a PRAM battery card can possibly wreak suck havok on a G4 running Leopard?

-James

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Macs store some essential information in PRAM, such as the boot device to use - at least they did prior to the Intel Macs. I'm not sure about those.

Anyway, yes - replace the PRAM battery, and all should be well again.

 

[bamaworks]

It just seems odd that something so minor can cause a complete system failure... hmmm.

 

[matperk]

It just seems odd that something so minor can cause a complete system failure... hmmm.

Agreed--on a PC all it would do is require you to set the clock, but would otherwise boot fine. Probably something new the EFI firmware does compared to BIOS.

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Agreed--on a PC all it would do is require you to set the clock, but would otherwise boot fine. Probably something new the EFI firmware does compared to BIOS.

This can't be it - an Aluminum PowerBook does NOT use EFI. It uses Open Firmware instead.

 

[bamaworks]

I agree, I can't figure it out. When I have the PRAM battery plugged into the logic board I have a system crash within the hour that won't recover without the removal of the PRAM...

 

[MacHamster68]

sorry wrong thread ..