G5 Quad taking a long time to POST

[Goftrey]

Hi guys,

I've got a G5 Quad here with an OCZ Vertex 2 SSD, and it's taking an unusually long time, even by PowerPC Mac standards, to POST (i.e. for the white screen to appear).

From power button to desktop it's taking a total of 50 seconds; and 30 seconds of which is just blank nothingness on the screen. I've owned a good few G5s over the years and absolutely none of them took anywhere near 30 seconds for the screen to ping up.

Aside from making sure the SSD is the default startup drive in System Prefs I'm not sure what else it could be. Any ideas?

Thanks!

EDIT for reference - from power button;
to chime: 8 seconds
to video: 28 seconds
to desktop: 55 seconds

 

[LightBulbFun]

alright first places i would start is remove all but the amount of ram needed to post and pull the SSD then see how long it takes to post. if it posts in a normal amount of time put all the ram back if it then takes too long sought through the ram to see what the problem stick is. if it posts in a normal amount of time take the SSD and put it in the other drive bay and see if it takes too long to post if it does then SSD is too blame (not too surprised SSDs are a bit pokey in G5s) also reset the PRAM (incase it is trying to boot from a non existent drive) also any PCI cards in the system pull em and see what it if anything happens. also make sure to list the full specs of the machine (specs are important )

hope this helps

 

[Gamer9430]

In addition to the above, try pushing the PMU reset button on the board. That fixed my G5 when it refused to POST once...

 

[Goftrey]

Thanks for the quick replies lads.

Sorry I probably should've mentioned - everything has been stripped out of the machine down to the GPU and 2 sticks of RAM. Regardless of whether the SSD is plugged in or not it doesn't affect the POST time. Adding sticks of RAM and/or PCIe cards also doesn't affect anything.

Giving the SMU button a prod hasn't changed anything either.

 

[LightBulbFun]

if you boot into OF does it report anything? also does going to diagnostics in System profiler say anything about a failed post. also on top of that does it chime and have you tried running ASD 2.6.3 on it? also while your in OF do the following command. "reset-nvram reset-all" (without quotes) hope this helps

 

[MagicBoy]

OCZ drives didn't have the best firmware in the world, they could get a bit glitchy even in a Windows PC. Best advice is to find an Intel SSD 320 for PowerPCs...

 

[Goftrey]

if you boot into OF does it report anything? also does going to diagnostics in System profiler say anything about a failed post. also on top of that does it chime and have you tried running ASD 2.6.3 on it? also while your in OF do the following command. "reset-nvram reset-all" (without quotes) hope this helps

I wouldn't have a clue as to how to get OF to pull up any potential errors posting. The logs in System Profiler look fine, but they only start recording after the machine posts so it's pretty pointless. Yes it chimes, and I don't have an ASD disc so I can't go down that route.

OCZ drives didn't have the best firmware in the world, they could get a bit glitchy even in a Windows PC. Best advice is to find an Intel SSD 320 for PowerPCs...

As I said in Post #4 with or without the SSD the machine takes the same amount to POST. Honestly I've been really impressed with it so far. Hasn't put a foot wrong.

 

[LightBulbFun]

Does this report anything? (being it chimes tho I think it will just say passed) also have you tried replacing the PRAM battery and or trying completely different RAM sticks and or GPU(s)?

 

[MagicBoy]

G5s are not the quickest thing to POST. I get a blank screen after the chime for a good 15 seconds before the grey Apple screen appears. Not sure if its worse since I filled it up with RAM.

An early Intel Mac is lightning quick in comparison.

OS X 10.2.8 on an Intel SSD is rather amusing. Takes an age to post then BLAM you're at the desktop.

 

[Goftrey]

Does this report anything? (being it chimes tho I think it will just say passed) also have you tried replacing the PRAM battery and or trying completely different RAM sticks and or GPU(s)?


View attachment 668186

Yeah it says it passed. PRAM battery is brand new and I have tried different RAM and a different GPU.

G5s are not the quickest thing to POST. I get a blank screen after the chime for a good 15 seconds before the grey Apple screen appears. Not sure if its worse since I filled it up with RAM.

Hmm. It could indeed just be a Quad G5 thing then. Given the machine behaves perfectly and has had pretty much every variable covered I'm totally stumped as to what it could be. I know for a fact my dual 1.8 G5 took 15 seconds from power button for video to kick in so it just seemed a little on the extreme side to take half a minute.

It'd be great if any fellow Quad owners could chip in!

 

[redheeler]

Timed mine at just over 28 seconds for an image to appear, and 51 seconds as the total boot time to desktop (with an SSD). So your boot times seem fairly normal.

 

[Dannyshing27]

This may sound a bit odd but have you set the SSD as your startup disk? I found that if it isn't set as such it wastes a few seconds searching for a disk to boot from rather than going straight to an assigned disk.

 

[Goftrey]

Timed mine at just over 28 seconds for an image to appear, and 51 seconds as the total boot time to desktop (with an SSD). So your boot times seem fairly normal.

Well I guess that's that then! Thanks for letting me know.

 

[1042686]

I just timed my dual 2.0GHz PMG5 out of curiosity after reading this thread and it took 1.05.58 minutes // 66 seconds from start to finish. Not as long as yours but not fast by any stretch.

 

[Ih8reno]

My quad with a regular hdd not ssd took 58 seconds from pressing the power button to desktop.

 

[hartleymartin]

A long time to POST is not unusual. My Mac Pro takes about 10-12 seconds to fully POST, and another 20-25 seconds or so to fully load everything from the SSD boot drive. My G5 was about the same, but OSX 10.4.11 is a relatively lightweight operating system and I think it generally loads from a cold start in about 45 seconds.

Before I put an SSD in my MacBook Pro, it would easily take 80-90 seconds to POST and fully boot. It is now down to about 25 seconds.

 

[California]

This may sound a bit odd but have you set the SSD as your startup disk? I found that if it isn't set as such it wastes a few seconds searching for a disk to boot from rather than going straight to an assigned disk.

I was going to suggest the same thing. Make sure your SSD is set as the "start up disk"... i don't recall my Quads taking that long but I had 16 gigs of ram loaded.