Kernel panic at boots… A CPU failure? [EDIT: No; RAM.]

[Lud DiLettante]

2–Select Burn Image... from the File menu, navigate to the downloaded image, select it, and click Burn.

There's no "Burn Image" on my Disk Utility. There is "Burn" and "New Image". So far, I've used burn.

3–Insert a 700 MB blank CD into the CD burner and close the carrier. After a few seconds the Burn button becomes active.

That's something I haven't done so far, inserting a CD after clicking "burn" instead of having it in already wouldn't be very intuitive to me...

Your burning the DMG file not a mounted image, correct?

I think I have. With the ASD I couldn't even mount it, right..? (The corrupt disk message.) With the AHT it mounted, but only "Read me" was visible.
Below is how they show on my Disk Utility. I realize I don't select one of these *at DU* to be burned, but from the menu that opens when I click "burn", but they just showed up conveniently here. I think I clicked "burn" at each of these per CD, resulting in the 3 burned CDs I have now.
However I can't remember when I used DU and when just Finder, but I thought they were just the same thing in a different order..?
So I guess the middle one is the one that shouldn't be burned..?

Where are you burning the discs, a second MAC or the G5 (with issues)?

G5. With issues. I'm beginning to feel this is my end. Together with my G5 we are victims of my ignorance, self-indulgence, and living in denial. Hack's mere question immediately revealed to me how many more steps backward I should've taken. I realize I probably shouldn't do ANYTHING on this Mac itself, but only subject it to treatment from an intact Mac by Target Disk Mode, except maybe some optical boots. I was thinking "Oh but DiskWorrier repairs everything", while ignoring the fact that right afterwards the DW graphs and Disk Utility show otherwise... Allowing this revealing light slowly filter into my foggy brain I suddenly realized the DiskWarriorDVD shows up on the internal app version's popup menu, selected it and clicked "Graph". I saw the score of some avant garde fugue. Well, only 5% of the items were out of order but it looked dramatic... and this was the tool I'd been relying on. I suppose I'll have to go thru getting a new copy of DW and burning it on some intact computer. And do the same with AHT and ASD.
Got DW graph from both the mounted AHT and the CD - what a beauty, like Bridget Riley doing vertical blue... 31% items out of order.
The AHT CD graph is anoher beauty, like Vasarely refining upon Riley after inspiration from Goethe's theory on blue. 9% out of order.
The ASD CD is perfect, nothing out of order..!

Unfortunately my other Mac, an Ibook, has issues of its own. Earlier I happily used it in its unreliable state on the G5, in Target Disk Mode. But now it's SO unreliable I was not tempted any more.
My Mac friends live in other cities, even countries at the moment... But I suppose the disk images could be DL'd/burned on Windows puters too..?
However I think tomorrow I may call library about their Mac situation, ideally I'd like to loan a laptop, but my best bet might be to lug the G5 onto the site. All this providing they still have Macs and they'll allow this kind of use.

What happens when you open the disk you made in the machine where you made it?

Well, with ASD I got a long verification (validation?), followed by the corrupt disk message.
With both AHTs I get a Finder window with the Read Me.

Do you have access to a USB keyboard (doesn't need to be Apple) to eliminate potential keyboard issues?

Nope. I've been looking at prices now however and realized even a new Apple keyboard is pretty affordable. There's also a local guy selling one at half price on a finnish Apple fan forum. I might try for that although I was ready to invest into a new one to be absolutely sure things will work...

I've also been looking at the PowerMac G5 manual for the first time in my life I think... (Found a PDF online.) I learned there's even a battery hidden in its depths somewhere... Obv. never replaced by me... Should just remember to have a look when the Mac is off. I even bought a battery tester... The G5 does show summer hours at the time, and has had its various startup problems.

I think I'll give the CDs a round of new boot attempts...

 

[Hack5190]

Here is a video I just created that shows how to burn the DMG under Leopard. Maybe it will be of some help (or maybe not).

After you burn the CD - shut down your Mac and disconnect the hard drive(s). That will bypass your lack of a wired keyboard and should force it to boot from CD. At that point you can run the hardware tests to see what it finds.

I should mention that you will need a mouse or keyboard to control the test software.

Good Luck!

 

[Lud DiLettante]

Thanks much Hack! If I don't manage now I'll have to become a real luddite! Anyway, I may well get a new keyboard before resorting to any desperate measures...

 

[Lud DiLettante]

OK... Couldn't figure out how to delete a redundant post here, so I just replaced it with this. ;D Maybe I'll reconsider my next step and replace this placeholder with something more substantive eventually...

 

[Hack5190]

If I could be so bold to suggest, before running disk warrior or other disk tools test the hardware!

Burn the AHT on a good machine (library?). Boot your G5 from the AHT disc and test the machine.

If it everything passes move on to the hard drive. Of course if it doesn't pass you should address the failed component(s) before running disk warrior.

Right now your trying to fix a hard drive running on unknown hardware with a disk that could be bad.

That's my $.02

 

[eyoungren]

If I could be so bold to suggest, before running disk warrior or other disk tools test the hardware!

Burn the AHT on a good machine (library?). Boot your G5 from the AHT disc and test the machine.

If it everything passes move on to the hard drive. Of course if it doesn't pass you should address the failed component(s) before running disk warrior.

Right now your trying to fix a hard drive running on unknown hardware with a disk that could be bad.

That's my $.02

Your suggestion is right on.

I think his hard drive is good and that it's something else. I had a bad SATA card affect my system with freezes so I suspect it's something along those lines.

 

[Lud DiLettante]

Great, Hack managed to save my original post to uhh, posterity..! Thanks for the advice, both H & E.

 

[eyoungren]

Great, Hack managed to save my original post to uhh, posterity..! Thanks for the advice, both H & E.

Ask him to wipe out the quote. He can do that.

 

[Hack5190]

OK... Couldn't figure out how to delete a redundant post here, so I just replaced it with this. ;D Maybe I'll reconsider my next step and replace this placeholder with something more substantive eventually...

"I've gotten the G5 running! Thanks for the help, I owe you a beer" would be a great replacement string.

 

[Lud DiLettante]

"I've gotten the G5 running! Thanks for the help, I owe you a beer" would be a great replacement string.

Hack & E might be so relieved at that point just by getting rid of me that the idea of me treating them to beer might make them vanish mysteriously...
[doublepost=1455334974][/doublepost]

Ask him to wipe out the quote. He can do that.

You want me to..? I thought he sort of justified it...
[doublepost=1455336632][/doublepost]Well damn, he went and wiped it..! I didn't ask him to, despite E's incitement.....

 

[flyrod]

I also got the panic trying to boot from the install DVD…

This to me sounds like a hardware problem. Particularly if you can test the DVD on a different machine. Trying to repair a file system with a flaky machine seems like a frustrating proposition to me. Suppose you could repair the file system, the problem is still there.

 

[Lud DiLettante]

This to me sounds like a hardware problem. Particularly if you can test the DVD on a different machine. Trying to repair a file system with a flaky machine seems like a frustrating proposition to me. Suppose you could repair the file system, the problem is still there.

Oh, there's some outdated stuff like that early in the thread, at that point I failed to take into account that my keyboard also has issues... ;D So I think that one was a case of Mac not getting the keyboard signal and thus booting onto the main drive. At the moment I've waited for some days to hear from a couple of people who are selling their wired Apple keyboards... next week I might as well buy a "first hand" one.

On monday at the latest I'm also going to burn Hardware Test on another Mac.

 

[Lud DiLettante]

Next step, next surprise...
I DL'd and burned AHT & ASD on a state of the art Mac. I'm typing this on a latest model wired Apple keyboard. And yes, I even got the G5 to boot on both AHT & ASD.
Sounds good so far, but.....
Neither my mouse nor the keyboard work when booted from those discs!

On AHT I can't get past the language menu. Cursor stays up left and I can neither use arrow keys to choose language, nor the enter key for the english that's active.
On ASD I guess there was no language menu, but same thing on the ASD front page: Cursor stays in left corner, no keys do anything.
Elsewhere both the old mouse and the new keyboard work perfectly.

?!?!?!?!??!

 

[Hack5190]

Next step, next surprise...
I DL'd and burned AHT & ASD on a state of the art Mac. I'm typing this on a latest model wired Apple keyboard. And yes, I even got the G5 to boot on both AHT & ASD.
Sounds good so far, but.....
Neither my mouse nor the keyboard work when booted from those discs!

On AHT I can't get past the language menu. Cursor stays up left and I can neither use arrow keys to choose language, nor the enter key for the english that's active.
On ASD I guess there was no language menu, but same thing on the ASD front page: Cursor stays in left corner, no keys do anything.
Elsewhere both the old mouse and the new keyboard work perfectly.

?!?!?!?!??!

How long did you wait for the keyboard & mouse to respond? It's been awhile since I used either of those disks but I recall they took a long time for the OS on those CD's to boot.

What kind of mouse / keyboard did you get?

 

[Lud DiLettante]

OK, I don't think I waited long as I never realized a cursor might take time to respond... but I did try things like reconnecting the mouse and trying different ports so at least it had some time to respond.

I didn't get a new mouse, my old trusty is Apple Optical USB 0x0307.
The new keyboard is Apple 0x0221. (These according to the System Information.)

I may try again and give it more time...

 

[Hack5190]

I may try again and give it more time...

Please do.

 

[Lud DiLettante]

Well, I'm sorry to report I waited for 10 minutes with fans beginning to scream... but no cursor movement or any keyboard response.
Earlier I tried both with the C and the Alt boot. Now I tried AHT with C, twice. Second time didn't care to wait for 10 mins.
One thing I'm not sure about is when to quit holding the C, as I've learned that should be when the Apple logo shows, but I get no Apple logo when booting the AHT... I get gray/black/gray, not sure if I got blue but I kept holding C until there was the ancient computer icon (AHT?). After that there was the language menu.

I suppose PRAM battery couldn't have anything to do with this..? I've never replaced it and wanted to check it but my battery tester doesn't accept that type of battery.

One thing: I was a little surprised to notice that the manufacturer of my Apple mouse is Logitech. I had put Logitech stuff to trash (LCC Connection Utility, Logitech Control Center Update, LCC Uninstaller) thinking it's only related to the Logitech DiNovo keyboard. I had uninstalled the Control Center already, anyway. The other stuff's still in the trash. I started wondering about this when I saw that around the time I'd been booting AHT there were Logitech-related errors in the console log:

16.2.2016 22.30.22 loginwindow[23] sendQuitEventToApp (Logitech Control Center Daemon): AESendMessage returned error -1712
16.2.2016 22.30.22 loginwindow[23] ERROR | -[ApplicationManager quitPrivateProcesses] | Application "Logitech Control Center Daemon" did not respond to quit event

But at least my Apple keyboard shouldn't have anything to do with Logitech...

More strange things: As sometimes before, I couldn't boot in safe mode, got only Apple logo without the wheel.
And, at least once when the G5 has gone to sleep it has ended up with screaming fans, forcing me to shut down manually.

 

[Hack5190]

A few thoughts...

Any keyboard drivers or other programs /changes you made in the OS are irrelevant when using AHT. AHT uses a special OS that was copied to the CD when you made it. That special OS is the "ancient computer icon" you saw. The fact that you get to the language selection screen seems to indicate AHT is booted. I'm not at home to test AHT and confirm the screen image sequence or boot time.

Since it seems like you can boot from CD by holding C and the boot menu with ALT - I have to presume that your USB port and keyboard are good. Next thing to try is reset the NVRAM (see below) and SMU (YouTube Link - jump to 1:55) then try try AHT again.

Resetting NVRAM: Locate the following keys on the keyboard: Command (⌘), Option, P, and R. Press and hold the Command-Option-P-R keys immediately after you hear the startup sound. Hold these keys until the computer restarts and you hear the startup sound for a third time.

 

[Lud DiLettante]

Yeah, this is the life. I see no change.

As for SMU, I found a PMU inside instead, but I seemed to recall reading this was just about the same thing, so I pressed that...

I reset NVRAM twice, because first time I forgot you said "third time" and only held for 2.
Everything seemed fine, I could even boot safe mode again and now I'm noticing other improvements. But when booting with C, I still got no mouse/keyboard response... Except, on first try my hand was on the mouse and I noticed the cursor appeared slightly off the default position... not that I ever saw it move.

Booting with Alt, I could choose the language but at the AHT itself everything was stuck again. I think it read the test was for PowerMac 2.5.2, and once again I don't know what that signifies. I've come to realize there are ridiculously many different ways to name a G5 model... On this site, I think this is the one I have http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g5/specs/powermac_g5_1.8_dp.html but then again the name Omega isn't even mentioned here, which is a name I get when identifying my G5 on Wikipedia... etc.

Next I tried booting ASD, on Alt. Things seemed promising because I could move the mouse on the front page. I didn't know what to start with, so I just clicked "Hardware Info" for no good reason. Got back to the main page right away but of course, now everything was stuck again... Wonder what'd happen if I clicked on a test instead...
So, the ASD is for 2.5.8. I noticed the burn instructions talk about "Disk Copy" and "Burn image", as you did originally, instead of Disk Utility and "burn". (Of course, I still have no "Disk Copy".)
[doublepost=1455728056][/doublepost]PS. I now read that the difference between PMU & SMU is that "PMU reset will also reset the PRAM/NVRAM. This is NOT the case with an SMU reset." There, I may have reset the NVRAM 3 times... ;D

 

[Hack5190]

Next I tried booting ASD, on Alt. Things seemed promising because I could move the mouse on the front page. I didn't know what to start with, so I just clicked "Hardware Info" for no good reason.

Focusing on the fact that you can get ASD to boot and can select options, thats a good place to start

I have to apologize because I am still out of town and unable to access my G5 so this is from memory....

Do a fresh boot of ASD and select the hardware test option. If I recall it displays the name of each test as it runs. Watch it and note the name of the test being performed if your system locks up. Hopefully it will complete the test and just report any errors. My experience recently with a dual 1.8 was that each test yielded different results / failure points. But in the end the mother board was bad and I replaced it.

 

[Lud DiLettante]

I retried as you suggested. But it just seems that traveling such a great distance across the screen all the way to "Test" is too much for the mouse.... I now realize the reason for clicking "Hardware info" menu last time must've been because it was the closest thing to the cursor, at the top left corner ;D

I might just keep trying again with various combinations (but not several times in a row, as repeating the loop can get pretty frustrating)...

I wonder if this might be a good time to buy some RAM... I only ever had the original 1GB... (dunno if the present problem could have anything to do with RAM, though..?)

 

[Hack5190]

I retried as you suggested. But it just seems that traveling such a great distance across the screen all the way to "Test" is too much for the mouse.... I now realize the reason for clicking "Hardware info" menu last time must've been because it was the closest thing to the cursor, at the top left corner ;D

I might just keep trying again with various combinations (but not several times in a row, as repeating the loop can get pretty frustrating)...

I wonder if this might be a good time to buy some RAM... I only ever had the original 1GB... (dunno if the present problem could have anything to do with RAM, though..?)

You shouldn't need more RAM just to test the hardware. What happens when you try to travel that great distance to test, does the system lock up?

 

[Lud DiLettante]

You shouldn't need more RAM just to test the hardware. What happens when you try to travel that great distance to test, does the system lock up?

Well, of course I only meant moving the cursor across the screen, but yeah it freezes and I can't find a way out except hard shutdown. (Otherwise, slowly but surely, only the fans will get going...)

 

[Hack5190]

Hate to say it but . . . It sounds like your system isn't stable enough to test. The series of problems your experiencing (many only happening 1 time or different each time) remind me of my recent battle with a dual 1.8 G5.

Before you give up - pop it open and remove the bottom CPU and run ASD w/only 1 CPU. If you get the same results (machine locks) pop out the top CPU, replace it with the CPU you removed from the bottom and try ASD again (only 1 CPU).

This G5 model needs RAM installed in pairs - so if you can reduce some modules or have others you can try it wouldn't hurt. Since you cant test the system w/ASD manual part swapping is the only option.

 

[Lud DiLettante]

Well damn. So the fact that both AHT & ASD freeze is a sign in itself that something's wrong enough with hardware so it can't be tested, rather than something simpler just preventing the discs from operating..?
It would be ironic because I've had less and less problems all the time, there's no sign at the moment of anything being wrong except those test freezes...

Looking back, the kernel panics stopped when I removed the TimeMachine drive.
DiskWarrior has since repaired the disks, even though the graph afterwards doesn't show optimized directories for them but perhaps erase/reinstall could fix that..? Or is that a sure sign of hardware messing with something..?
The DiNovo keyboard, and especially the Logitech software that seemed to cause various problems (including panics when trying to update), has been replaced with a wired Apple one.
Resetting PMU seemed to eliminate the last lingering problems.

So, guess I'm just waiting for some Yellowstone eruption here..?

Before you give up - pop it open and remove the bottom CPU and run ASD w/only 1 CPU. If you get the same results (machine locks) pop out the top CPU, replace it with the CPU you removed from the bottom and try ASD again (only 1 CPU).
This G5 model needs RAM installed in pairs - so if you can reduce some modules or have others you can try it wouldn't hurt. Since you cant test the system w/ASD manual part swapping is the only option.

I guess this part is what Flyrod was talking about with "swapping/reseating ram video cards, cpu, etc" before anybody even mentioned AHT or ASD..? Well, it looks like rocky terrain for me, just more mountains to climb so I doubt I'll be starting on all that quite just yet... I have an itch for getting to reinstall OSX and only restoring the home folder on top of it this time, but maybe reinstallation without being able to test hardware is just asking for more trouble..? Maybe I should just start thinking about getting another computer... although I don't quite feel like that yet.