iBook G4 14" random freezes

[Lastic]

I decided to open a seperate thread since I was derailing the MorphOS thread.

I took this machine back out of my closet after what might have been a 2 year no use period, it has an ATA-mSATA adapter and an 60 GB SSD with 2 Leopard partitions on it.

Sympthons so far

power on , nothing no light grey screen , just a dark grey (before POST) screen
power on , flashing disk symbol
power on, boots , seems to work for 2 minutes after everything has booted in Leopard and then freezes
power on , weird video glitches, freezing
power on , boots verbose ? and shows me the You need to restart the computer graphic on top of non GUI console boot
power on , Leopard boots , all looks fine , You need to the restart the computer graphic.
power on , boot from the MorphOS Live CD , same story, after 5 or 10 minutes it just freezes.

I've done the NVRAM reset routine, tried to boot it from a CF Firewire adapter, Safe Mode, Verbose Mode, booting (when it would let me) in Leopard and turning Airport off.

Any other ideas ? Or should I resort to opening it and removing the SSD ? (but why does it hang on CD or external FW boots also ? )

 

[Dronecatcher]

I had similar issues with a G4 iBook - it was the airport card/socket problem - I removed the card (which still didn't fix it) but then disabled all the airport kexts - that did the trick.
Might be worth trying to access it in target mode and disable those kexts?

 

[Lastic]

I had similar issues with a G4 iBook - it was the airport card/socket problem - I removed the card (which still didn't fix it) but then disabled all the airport kexts - that did the trick.
Might be worth trying to access it in target mode and disable those kexts?

Ok for anyone looking into this thread and having the same issue

How to disable the airport card in the mid 2005 iBook to prevent crashing - Macintosh Repository

Many iBook G4 laptops (and possibly other models) have a problem with the inbuilt AirPort card failing, and then causing regular kernel panics. This...

www.macintoshrepository.org

I started in Safe mode and then did the steps above, let's see if the machine stays stable.
It has booted and is insanely reading a lot from the SSD ...

 

[Lastic]

And whilst I was Repairing Permissions on the (not booted) 2nd Leopard partition it froze , rebooted again into the kext disabled Leopard partition, and it freezes immediately , sigh ....

 

[philgxxd]

Did you do a RAM test already?
When i hear random i have to think in RAM.

 

[Lastic]

Did you do a RAM test already?
When i hear random i have to think in RAM.

AHT ? Not yet, it's on the Leopard DVD ?

 

[philgxxd]

I have no idea. You can install Applejack with the optional memtest install. Very handy.

 

[Lastic]

Well the problem is that the iBook freezes constantly so installing or running anything is not that easy.
But ... I bought another iBook G4 14" for 45 EUR shipping included (it arrived today looks like it's new except for a corner in the topcase which has a gap) with 512/512Kb RAM and transplanted this working RAM into my kernel-panicking iBook to no avail.

So guessing I got one good iBook G4 14" now and the one from this topic will be for spares.

 

[Certificate of Excellence]

Boot into verbose and tell us what it says up to the point of freezing. My 867mhz powerbook started freezing on boot - in my case it was an easy & cheap fix; a faulty airport card. Booting into verbose told me the boot was hanging on initializing the airport card. Worth taking a look at and seeing where in the boot process the machine is freezing at.

 

[Lastic]

Well we can deduct the 1 MB RAM since I transplated that RAM now in the other new iBook and it doesn't freeze.

Let me show you a 10 minute session trying to boot the freezing iBook.

Turning it on , just letting it boot

OK power off , power on with ALT pressed to select a boot drive

Clicking on the continue arrow, it just starts rescanning all volumes, even when I select the 2nd partition (Github) , same deal, it rescans the drives whenever I select a drive to boot

OK , power off , power on with an external FireWire CF card reader connected, I can choose a partition from it (Cleanbook) and start it, it boots into Leopard

and then after 30 seconds my mouse pointer is stuck

OK power off again, detached the Firewire CF reader, booting into Verbose mode (CMD+V)

And it's stuck again, aha might this be the Airport module ?

Power off again, boot again into Verbose mode, it continues and boots my first partition on the SSD

And then it's stuck again, this was 15 minutes of trying to boot it.

Strange thing is , 2 days ago it would still boot , I even managed to boot into Safe Mode on the first partition of the SSD and like Dronecatcher suggested I deleted the kexts.
It would then subsequently boot and work for 5 minutes, then it would work for 2 minutes, then freezing at poweron.

There is no pattern to it, only thing left to do is to remove the Airport card and check if that resolves it ?

 

[Dronecatcher]

When I was having the airport problem with mine I did find that I could boot from a Live Linux DVD without issues - presumably because there were no calls to the wireless hardware?

 

[Lastic]

When I was having the airport problem with mine I did find that I could boot from a Live Linux DVD without issues - presumably because there were no calls to the wireless hardware?

That would make sense since on most Linux Live distros you need to add the proprietary broadcom drivers after an install except for OpenBSD as I recall but the biggest hurdle is that sometimes it simply doesn't boot .


At this moment boot from MorphOS CD Rom (holding C at boot) first drops me in the OpenFirmware prompt, then I reboot and CD-ROM starts, wl0 in MorphOS Live CD is disabled by default, so I'll leave it running now to see if it freezes or not until the 30 minutes slowdown timer.

It's just so inconsistent, that I'll probably just open it up and take out the Airport Card .
If that doesn't make it boot into OS X and stay stable again, I'm taking out the SSD and transplanting it into the new iBook 14".

 

[Lastic]

And it has been stable for 30 minutes without freezing booting from the MorphOS Live CD which doesn't enable WLAN from boot.


Surgery it is , Airport card go it must

 

[Lastic]

OK I'm throwing in the towel.

Swapped the working Airport card into the freezing Powerbook booted from SSD, freezes.
Swapped the working MorphOS HDD into the freezing Powerbook, it's stable with working wireless.

At this point I'm even no longer sure that it actually was the Airport card at fault but rather the SSD ?

And to top of this day, when reassembling the newly bought iBook, the powerbutton connector on the PCB came loose, aaaaaaarghhhhhhhhh.

So now I have a newly bought , powerbutton less iBook and the old one who works now but without SSD.

 

[Dronecatcher]

The problem on mine wasn't the airport module but it's connector on the logic board ie removing airport alone wasn't enough, I had to ditch the kexts too...I wonder if there's a possibility that your socket is effected by a thermal issue that only develops when the SSD is in there - some SSDs/adapters do run hotter because of their voltage converter.

 

[Lastic]

The problem on mine wasn't the airport module but it's connector on the logic board ie removing airport alone wasn't enough, I had to ditch the kexts too...I wonder if there's a possibility that your socket is effected by a thermal issue that only develops when the SSD is in there - some SSDs/adapters do run hotter because of their voltage converter.

That's the thing I really don't know anymore, is it the RAM , is it the SSD , is it the Airport card, is it the Airport connector , stupid thing is I had a new replacement machine and just wanted to add the SSD to it and now I'm looking at SMD level soldering https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/iRlLgK1HvQsnKmnI.full

I've wiggled the power connector with a spudger on the old machine already 6 or 7 times today, never broke it, and on the new machine it happened immediately.

Calling it a day, I've spend a whole day of sun inside trying to get a bootable machine and now it's midnight and still nothing is stable, pff , what a day.

 

[Macbookprodude]

After all that, just get a new one - they don't cost much on ebay. You put a lot of time and effort into it, now its time to just get a new one.