Lombard Woes

[Daedalus256]

My lombard has been acting up. Here are the list of symptoms.

1. Sometimes it will wake up from a sleep, other times it just won't. I mean it stays on and everything and I have to take the battery out/unplug it to reboot it.

2. Wifi adapter locks up. Sometimes it'll be working fine and then just stop responding. If I try to remove it the system locks up or it gives me the "Restart your computer" message.

3. Just today I tried to boot it up after reseating some stuff and well...it gives me the folder icon with a question mark. What? Seriously OSX is installed the drive and everything.

4. When I install Panther, it typically nowadays gives me errors when installing stuff from the second disc.

I may note that this thing has a new 333mhz processor in it. It does NOT have a PRAM battery though, which I think may be causing these issues.

Any thoughts?

 

[GimmeSlack12]

Have you reset the PRAM? And it doesn't have a PRAM battery, or no PRAM battery needed? If it requires a PRAM battery and doesn't have one, then yes, that's a problem.

I might also suggest a harddrive test on the machine (startup with OS 9 CD) and disc utility the thing. Backing up and wiping the drive might be a good idea.

Somehow the problems seem related, but I cannot put a finger on what. I have never had experience with logic board failures, so I'm not going to suggest that.

 

[DougTheImpaler]

I've had RAM cause some of that stuff before...usually it's marginal to begin with and just flakes out over time. I had a Wallstreet that could:

use a PCMCIA Wifi adapter
wake from sleep every time
install OS X and be very stable

As long as it only had 128MB of memory. When I tried to add the 256MB SO-DIMM i had in it, it'd only occasionally wake from sleep, it'd frequently drop the wifi card and only a reboot would help, and get a kernel panic within a few hours of use.

Oh, did Apple ship a hardware test CD with that machine? When I had the flaky memory, I had no hardware test CD to use (because it was an Old World machine) but TechTool Pro was helpful.

 

[Daedalus256]

Ok first off:

no it doesn't require the PRAM to run. Infact my friend (who is a mac genius admin at the local apple store) said that I wouldn't even really need it if it I had a real working battery installed (which I do)

Couldn't be the RAM. Same friend and I did some mem tests and I've ran TechTools Pro 4 on it a few times without any warnings or problems popping up.

I did notice when the OSX installer didn't detect my HDD that I may have accidentally dislodged the HDD cable which I put in the new processor. So I plugged it in firmly and had no issues installing OSX and I'm currently testing to see if it wakes up from sleep after it's been down for a while.

edit: also I've never had a kernel panic with this machine.

 

[Daedalus256]

Just to wrap things up here...(and explain to everyone how this was fixed for future reference)

The HDD must have been causing the problems. I must have disconnected it slightly causing it to not locate it at key times or something because the machine has operated without error for more than a day now.

EDIT: Also note that I reseated my processor and move the RAM chips around, placing the 128 stick on the bottom and the 256 on the top. Hey, I'm just putting what I did here incase someone else comes along with a similar issue and needs help!

 

[DougTheImpaler]

Glad you got it worked out.