I have had two SSDs in an OWC multi-mount in the second optical bay, one for Lion and one for Photoshop scratch. However, I recently began having intermittent boot problems. Sometimes there wouldn't be an Apple symbol upon boot/reboot, yet sometimes there would and the computer would boot. I have not experienced any crashes, kernel panics or such.
I thought the Lion SSD was faulty so installed Mountain Lion on the scratch drive, a Mercury Electra 3G which I have recently received as an RMA replacement from OWC due to a previously faulty Mercury Extreme (old version). However, immediately there were boot problems from the Electra.
I have a feeling there is something wrong with the two extra SATA ports on the logic board. I am now booted off the Lion SSD placed in an external USB enclosure, which works but is a bit slower (I will get a bracket to install that SSD in the ordinary internal bays).
My question is how I can diagnose the logic board generally and specifically the extra SATA ports. I have Tech Tool Pro 6 but it doesn't seem to have any diagnostics for the logic board.
I also thought I had AHT but on the Leopard DVD 1, which came with the Mac Pro (10.5.2) and on which AHT is supposed to be, there is no trace of AHT. Odd. Booting from that DVD will only bring up the Leopard installer (even pressing Option for boot menu will not show an AHT volume).
So, I'd be very grateful for any ideas how to check my logic board.
Also, I do think the Electra is broken because I am unable to boot ML from it in the USB enclosure. It doesn't even show up in Disk Utility or Finder. It's like it is completely dead. Anything I can do about that (except again sending an SSD to OWC for replacement...)?
Cheers
/p
I thought the Lion SSD was faulty so installed Mountain Lion on the scratch drive, a Mercury Electra 3G which I have recently received as an RMA replacement from OWC due to a previously faulty Mercury Extreme (old version). However, immediately there were boot problems from the Electra.
I have a feeling there is something wrong with the two extra SATA ports on the logic board. I am now booted off the Lion SSD placed in an external USB enclosure, which works but is a bit slower (I will get a bracket to install that SSD in the ordinary internal bays).
My question is how I can diagnose the logic board generally and specifically the extra SATA ports. I have Tech Tool Pro 6 but it doesn't seem to have any diagnostics for the logic board.
I also thought I had AHT but on the Leopard DVD 1, which came with the Mac Pro (10.5.2) and on which AHT is supposed to be, there is no trace of AHT. Odd. Booting from that DVD will only bring up the Leopard installer (even pressing Option for boot menu will not show an AHT volume).
So, I'd be very grateful for any ideas how to check my logic board.
Also, I do think the Electra is broken because I am unable to boot ML from it in the USB enclosure. It doesn't even show up in Disk Utility or Finder. It's like it is completely dead. Anything I can do about that (except again sending an SSD to OWC for replacement...)?
Cheers
/p