Trouble Booting

[Caffereine]

As of two weeks ago I have not been able to boot my powerbook. I am met with question mark within a folder. I attempted to use the installation CD to recover the installation, and realised that my DVD drive no longer worked (I never really used it). I have tried everything suggested on the apple.com site, as well as a bunch of things on other sites. I purchased a new drive, and trying to boot off of the DVD within that does not work, though I can hear both the HD and the DVD drive spinning up. I have tried holding down C as well as holding down option at boot. The DVD won't even eject from this drive, a problem I did not have with the previously broken drive.

It won't boot into Single User mode and won't Safe Boot either. I have not tried using Target Disk Mode because when I attempt to trigger it, I never receive the FireWire prompt on the screen.

I would think that the DVD drive would be functional as it is the same model as the previous one, and pulled from the same model of Powerbook.

Additionally, I have tried an external FireWire DVD drive, and this does not work.

If I run Open Firmware and try to dir the HD, I receive:

0 >dir hd:\ can't OPEN the DIR device

It takes 20 seconds to give that the first time, but immediately all other times.

dir cd:\ has the same result.

edit: I have been fiddling with Open Firmware some more and decided instead of trying "dir cd:\" I'd try the other IDE devices listed. I can now get a directory listing of the DVD using "dir ide1:\".

I think perhaps if I set that as the boot device, I'll be able to actually access its contents.

Any idea of how I might do that?

 

[Caffereine]

Also, typing "eject cd" has no effect, but "eject ide1" works fine at Open Firmware to eject the CD.

 

[frankblundt]

will it eject if you hold down the mouse button?
and i presume you've tried:

Maybe give zapping the PRAM a try.

and what about plugging in a USB keyboard and using the boot keys with that? (although if you can type in OF i presume the keyboard's OK)

there's a bunch of (more useful) suggestions here (including setting the boot device from OF).

 

[Caffereine]

Nope, tried that. I did get it to eject though, but that's really weird, because that device shouldn't be ide1.

I have tried zapping the PRAM, and the boot keys work, but if I ask it to go into Target Disk Mode it just boots up, sits there for a bit with nothing on the screen, and restarts, which is weird, because that should just be a firmware operation, and if I can get into OF, I should be able to do that.

 

[frankblundt]

did you try the prnenv in OF? followed by:
setenv boot-device [device from env],\System\Library\CoreServices\BootX like in the link?

 

[Caffereine]

It looks like there was a problem with that CD. I am now using a new Tiger DVD and I am able to boot from the CD. If I try use the disk utility under the boot menu, it only finds the CD.

The problem now is that the hard drive powers up but nothing happens. I took out that hard drive, put it into another laptop, and ran a hard drive disk utility on it, and it came up fine. I could even see the data on it.

Should I bother trying to replace the hard drive cable even though it powers and spins up? Should I try another hard drive?

I am thinking I will try to replace the cable, and then try a firewire enclosure, but I was wondering if there was some other way of discovering what the issue was.

 

[yellow]

If you pulled the HD and it worked in another Mac, then the problem is likely either the cable or the connector on the logic board. At this point you should be contacting Apple or an Apple Certified Repair Center. Hopefully you're still under warranty.

 

[Caffereine]

I put the HD into a non-mac laptop and ran a disk utility on it to see if it was working. It checked the SMART diagnostics and did a scan of the HD, finding everything that should be there.

I have ordered a HD flex-cable off of eBay from another Powerbook and will try that.

I doubt that I am still under warrenty, as I opened up the machine to replace the DVD/CD-RW drive.