PowerMac 9500 not booting

[skroo]

I have a PowerMac 9500 that is currently refusing to boot. Basically, here's what happens:

- Boot with 'C' held down for CD boot.

- Watch as Happy Mac icon comes up.

- Wait until CD-ROM drive spins down and nothing happens.

The CD I am attempting to boot from is bootable. There is no SCSI ID conflict (HDD on 1, CD-ROM on 3). The HDD is a Seagate Barracuda 15150N, which I am assuming is non-original (and has no OS installed on it).

PRAM has been zapped. There's no OS on the HDD, so it's obviously not an extensions problem. Any ideas?

[kampf]

Is the CD an original Apple CD? Is it the original Apple CDROM drive?

I've had VERY mixed success getting burnt CDRs to boot and the older the machine, the worse off it gets.

[skroo]

Originally posted by kampf
Is the CD an original Apple CD? Is it the original Apple CDROM drive?

Yes on both (the CD's an 'Apple System Software Recovery' release: I've used it to recover other machines before), and I can verify that the drive does spin up. It may be worth mentioning that I lose the pointer once the Happy Mac appears.

I've had VERY mixed success getting burnt CDRs to boot and the older the machine, the worse off it gets.

Agreed. I have System 7.5.3 around here somewhere on floppy; I may try that just to see what happens. Just out of curiosity, does anyone know what HDD make and model originally shipped with that system, and what the termination config was for it?

[kampf]

Lowendmac usually has about all of the goodies that you can shake a stick at for any Mac model, but i don't think they go that deep...

Most SCSI drives that Apple used in that era were Apple branded Quantum units. You might be able to find info about the drive on Maxtor's site, as they bought Quantum out a while ago.

[skroo]

Ack, neglected to mention...

The HDD's actually a Seagate Barracuda. Model 15150N, IIRC. That was definitely a swapout (hell, I pulled it out of one of my Indys), but it is a known good drive.

This is driving me up the wall: I've never had problems like this on any Mac before with an OS reinstall.

[jetforce4004]

I've had similar problems on a desktop computer trying to install redhat 7.3 and thats bootable. It appeared to be a bad cd-rom mabye you should try a different one if you can sounds like a hardware problem.

[Gadsden]

Hmm.. Hardware shoot time? ;)

Is the cdrom drive known to be good? Do you have another one that you can swap out to try?

Good luck, I have had bad luck with Macs.. I will not let the one I inhereted get the best of me though..

[skroo]

CD-ROM...

...Assumed good. It was working prior to the HDD being replaced. I'm leaning towards this possibly being a termination problem, but there's no reason why I can't connect an external unit and see what happens.

[Gadsden]

Re: CD-ROM...

Originally posted by skroo
...Assumed good. It was working prior to the HDD being replaced. I'm leaning towards this possibly being a termination problem, but there's no reason why I can't connect an external unit and see what happens.

I HAVE seen a terminator that was fucked up one time; how the hell that is possible I have no fucking clue (possessed by satan?); at least that was the best theory we could come up with. Replace the fucking terminator and it worked; put the old one back on and it did not. Fucking weird.
You could always use my theory; strip down to barebones; and when in doubt, swap it out. ;)

[skroo]

I'm halfway to giving up...

I have no idea what's going on. Termination's in place (double-checked against Seagate's docs), drives spin up, etc. This is driving me mad: none of my other Macs have ever done this. Is anyone aware of any trickery that has to be done with the 9500s to get them to handle a new drive?

[kampf]

Have you tried booting from the CD without the drive attached?

What file system is currently on the drive? Can it be reformatted? Blanked?

Do you have a SCSI Zip or any other media you can boot from?