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Insomniac MDD G4

D

dustboy

macrumors member
Original poster
Nov 30, 2006
34
0
My old 867 MDD G4 is sick. For a long time now, it won't sleep, and startup takes about 10 minutes. Also has weird problems like if I try to eject a DVD, it will dismount but not open the drive, you have to reboot to get the disc out. When you try to sleep it, the drives will spin down and the screen goes blank but it never turns off the PSU.

Lately I tried wiping the boot drive and reinstalling 10.5, but it always hangs on install.

I tried re-seating all of the cards and bus connectors, and removed a PCI USB 2.0 card.
 
If it's still happening after removing the USB PCI card then I am not sure. I used to own a dual 1.42 MDD and it was a USB PCI card that stopped it from sleeping.

I would try one of 2 different things. Maybe both.

1. Zap the PRAM by following the steps here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/89736/

2. Try removing the mobo battery for 10-15 min while the machine is off. After that put the battery back in and press the PMU button. Be sure to press it just once or you will crash the PMU. I am including a photo of the mobo that shows where the pmu button is. It's right next to the optical bay fan that resides on the door near the front.

mddlogicbd4ga.jpg

mddlogicbd4ga.jpg
 
Okay, I tried the PMU and PRAM reset..and disconnected all of the unnecessary optical and HD drives. System install is still hanging up (eternal pinwheel of death). Can't check if it will sleep now since I don't have an OS installed.

Next I might try installing the OS to a different drive, the one I'm using is the original 60G.

Edit: I just started a Time Machine restore, which seems to be progressing okay. I was hoping to start clean, but this may have to do.
 
Another thing to keep in mind..

I have noticed after doing about 15-20 Leopard installs on different systems so far that it can often seem like it's hanging at times but isn't mostly.

At least on PowerPC macs it seems to do a lot more thinking during install than any Mac OS before it.
 
zen.state said:
Another thing to keep in mind..

I have noticed after doing about 15-20 Leopard installs on different systems so far that it can often seem like it's hanging at times but isn't mostly.

At least on PowerPC macs it seems to do a lot more thinking during install than any Mac OS before it.
Click to expand...

It happens mostly in first phase of installation. After a while of "hang", progress bar goes further. I also experienced this when installing Leo on PPC.
 
666sheep said:
It happens mostly in first phase of installation. After a while of "hang", progress bar goes further. I also experienced this when installing Leo on PPC.
Click to expand...

i remember that the day i got leo, i was sitting on top of a c****y pc waiting for it to install on my g4 mini and the bar froze but a bit later it unfroze
 
So how much hang time are we talking about?? It started to pinwheel (w/ stripes in the progress bar), I walked away for two hours, and nothing changed.

The TM restore worked fine, but still no sleep. Would a bad clock battery cause this? It's the original battery.
 
dustboy said:
So how much hang time are we talking about?? It started to pinwheel (w/ stripes in the progress bar), I walked away for two hours, and nothing changed.

The TM restore worked fine, but still no sleep. Would a bad clock battery cause this? It's the original battery.
Click to expand...

try running Cache Out X to get rid of any sleep caches that may be messing with the computer.

If that doesn't work, there might be something wrong with the hardware. First thing i'd check is the voltage regulators, they're SOIC-14 chips. I don't know how to go about checking them, but eventually your mac will not shut down if that is the problem.
 
G4 MDD with G5 2.0 MHZ CPU

I have a G4 MDD in good condition and I have a G5 processor 2,0 ghz and i think replace a CPU g4 with one G5 , its compatible, i need coments all respects


thanks


Nicholas
 
nicomsm said:
i have a g4 mdd in good condition and i have a g5 processor 2,0 ghz and i think replace a cpu g4 with one g5 , its compatible, i need coments all respects


thanks


nicholas
Click to expand...

omg another one which wants to put his g4 on fire
 
Last edited:
Since you want comments in all respects:

1 - This is not in any way relevant to this thread, so I'm not sure why you posted in this thread instead of starting a new one.

2 - What you want to do is physically impossible. There won't be enough cooling, the CPU dies won't match up, the FSB will be an insane bottleneck, etc. It would cost more money to force it to work than it would cost to simply buy a G5 outright at this point.
 
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