Wallstreet Not Booting

[Daedalus256]

I recently got this really nice Wallstreet. It's a 466mhz G3 (Powerlogix upgrade chip), 512MB RAM and a recently wiped 20GB HD. At any rate it's a very nice machine and I hope I get it working.

So today I borrowed a yo-yo and tried to boot it up I was met by a Floppy disk with a question mark, different from the typical folder with a question mark. Ok, this shouldn't be too hard. I just try booting holding down C and well...get nothing. I hear the CD drive churning away but alas, nothing.

I try a OS9 CD and OSX Jaguar and neither of them do anything.

The thing gets into open firmware just fine but it just can't seem to boot an OS. Any suggestions?

 

[FocusAndEarnIt]

If you're booting with OS 9, the HD needs to have OS 9 drivers which I doubt it has.

Maybe the HD is bad?

 

[RGunner]

Wallstreet's

Couple ideas, the Wallstreet PRAM reset (3 dongs) is incredibly long... were you able to do it? (command-option-P-R) but you probably knew that.

Is there Open Firmware you can get to on the WS? command-option-O-F

If so then type:

reset-nvram "hit return"
set-defaults "hit return"
reset-all "hit return"

The WS should reboot now with all NVRAM settings cleared. Past that, try a replacement CDRom drive.

 

[Daedalus256]

Well luckily I have a 4gb drive from my old lombard that has Panther already on it and I'm trying that in the machine right now and I'm getting nothing but a white screen. I guess I'll have to try the 233mhz chip that came with the machine.

edit: Also, it's running OF 2.01 but for some reason refuses to recognize the reset-nvram command. Set-defaults and reset-all works ok though.

 

[Bunsen Burner]

The Wallstreet will not run Panther without XPostFacto.

BB

 

[aquajet]

edit: Also, it's running OF 2.01 but for some reason refuses to recognize the reset-nvram command. Set-defaults and reset-all works ok though.

try init-nvram instead of reset-nvram

 

[Daedalus256]

The Wallstreet will not run Panther without XPostFacto.

BB

I am aware of this. I figured SOMETHING would happen though.

At any rate I went to do something to it, took the processor and HDD out, forgot to put them back in and plugged it in. When I plugged it back in the green light stayed on and refused to shut off. I unplugged it (not knowing I left the proc and hdd out) and threw them back in only to have it not boot, no green light nothing.

Looks like I killed it

Great, money down the drain.

EDIT: oh snap! It's not dead!

EDIT2: Also init-nvram worked but I still get the floppy disk icon

 

[RGunner]

Just to confirm...

you do have a OEM 9.0 or 9.1 CD disk right??

Burned CD-r's / CDRW's could do this, as well not having a correct install CD.

 

[Daedalus256]

Well here's what has happened:

I threw the 4GB HD in it and ran the BOOT CDROM command in open firmware and turns out that the 4gig SOMEHOW booted Jaguar from that. So it's running Jaguar on the 4 gig (although it keeps defaulting to SUPER low brightness) At any rate it runs on the 4gig just fine and it's faster than my lombard was!

So now I KNOW this 20gig drive works just fine and everything, it's been verified and cleaned before shipping. So what's going on here?

 

[ahunter3]

What OS is on that 20 gig hard drive?

1) You do know that OS X has to be on an 8-gig-or-less partition, and furthermore entirely within the first 8 gigs of the drive, right? The only exception, I believe, is if you use an external SCSI drive (WallStreets have an HDI SCSI port in back)

2) A MacOS X volume must be blessed differently for an old-world machine like the WallStreet. The OS X installer knows that and old-world blesses the volume during the installation process. But if you've used Carbon Copy Cloner or Retrospect or something akin to that to duplicate a bootable copy of OS X onto the drive, the WallStreet may not recognize it as having the right kind of boot blocks. Here is a command-line instruction that will bless an OS X installation for old-world boxes: sudo /usr/sbin/bless -device /dev/disk1s9 -label "'GiveDrive_aName'" -xcoff /usr/standalone/ppc/bootx.xcoff

3) OS 9 (or 8 for that matter, WallStreets can do 8) can be a pain to bless, too. Easy enough if you can boot OS 9 from some device — just navigate to the System Folder, yank the Finder out of it and then toss it back in. That resets the boot blocks. But doing all that under OS X doesn't seem to do anything of the sort. If you have a bootable OS 9 (or 8) CD, you can force the WallStreet to reset the system type to the old-fashioned systems by doing a power reset (fn-Control-Shift-Powerkey) and then boot while holding down the "C" key. Then do the Finder-yank trick as described above and reboot and see if it boots in 9.

 

[ahunter3]

The Wallstreet will not run Panther without XPostFacto.

BB

BTW, this isn't precisely correct. You need XPostFacto to install Panther, but once it is installed you can select it from within OS 9's "Startup Disk" Control Panel and it will boot from Panther as readily as a more modern Mac. So you really only need XPostFacto for the duration of the installation, unless you're trying to boot from a device or partition (see above note about 8 gig partition size limit) that the WallStreet won't natively boot OS X from.

I ran Panther on a WallStreet for quite some time, intermittently switching to other operating systems also installed, and switching back, and never had to launch XPostFacto to do so.

 

[Daedalus256]

I'm really not sure about the 20gig in any way. All I know is that it was verified and wiped prior to being shipped to me.

I've decided to wait until my friend gets back to me to put that drive in the wallstreet since with the 4gig (and the 256mb of ram and 466mhz processor) It runs Jaguar like a champ.

edit: haha oh my I hate me sometimes. I love it when I can't leave well enough alone. I'm getting the floppy disk icon all the time with the 4gig in now :lol:

 

[Daedalus256]

What OS is on that 20 gig hard drive?

1) You do know that OS X has to be on an 8-gig-or-less partition, and furthermore entirely within the first 8 gigs of the drive, right? The only exception, I believe, is if you use an external SCSI drive (WallStreets have an HDI SCSI port in back)

2) A MacOS X volume must be blessed differently for an old-world machine like the WallStreet. The OS X installer knows that and old-world blesses the volume during the installation process. But if you've used Carbon Copy Cloner or Retrospect or something akin to that to duplicate a bootable copy of OS X onto the drive, the WallStreet may not recognize it as having the right kind of boot blocks. Here is a command-line instruction that will bless an OS X installation for old-world boxes: sudo /usr/sbin/bless -device /dev/disk1s9 -label "'GiveDrive_aName'" -xcoff /usr/standalone/ppc/bootx.xcoff

3) OS 9 (or 8 for that matter, WallStreets can do 8) can be a pain to bless, too. Easy enough if you can boot OS 9 from some device — just navigate to the System Folder, yank the Finder out of it and then toss it back in. That resets the boot blocks. But doing all that under OS X doesn't seem to do anything of the sort. If you have a bootable OS 9 (or 8) CD, you can force the WallStreet to reset the system type to the old-fashioned systems by doing a power reset (fn-Control-Shift-Powerkey) and then boot while holding down the "C" key. Then do the Finder-yank trick as described above and reboot and see if it boots in 9.

so what does this command line do and how do I use it? typing that into open firmware doesn't do much.

 

[ahunter3]

so what does this command line do and how do I use it? typing that into open firmware doesn't do much.

You have to boot all the way into OS X and then type that in the Terminal.

I would do a power-reset and then 3-4 PRAM resets and see if it will boot from the 4 gig drive, since it did before.

 

[Daedalus256]

You have to boot all the way into OS X and then type that in the Terminal.

I would do a power-reset and then 3-4 PRAM resets and see if it will boot from the 4 gig drive, since it did before.

Just tried that (hell gave it 5 pram resets) and I'm still getting the floppy disk with a question mark.

Oh dear, I had no idea this thing was going to be so painful to get working, heh.

 

[Daedalus256]

Well it looks like my only hope of getting this working is to throw the 20GB in the Lombard the girlfriend has and format it using that and putting jaguar on it and then putting that in the wallstreet. But given the track record of this machine I have no idea if even THAT will work.

 

[Daedalus256]

Well well! I am posting from the Wallstreet on OSX 10.2.8! Yep I got it working. How? Well I just used the G3 Lombard that is now owned by my girlfriend, formatted and partitioned the drive (with the 8gb first partition that OSX installs to) and threw it in the wallstreet and it works! Wee!

 

[ahunter3]

Congrats!

The WS is a great machine.

 

[Daedalus256]

Ok, I'm at my WITS END WITH THIS MACHINE. I've ABSOLUTELY HAD IT WITH THIS USELESS PIECE OF GARBAGE THAT APPLE CALLS A LAPTOP.

I just left it on last night after it successfully ran and booted Jaguar and it went to sleep, nothing unusual right? Well today I went to go wake it up (left it over girlfriend's house) and well it doesn't wake up. No problem, I just unplug it and plug it back in and it decided HAY GUYZ GUESS WHAT YUO DONT HAVE A STARTUP DISK LOL!!

Yep that's right that friggin floppy disk with a question mark rears it's UGLY LITTLE FACE again. It won't boot now.

SOMEONE suggest something before I honest to god friggin take a goddamn chainsaw to this piece of ****.

 

[mahashel]

**disclaimer: my experience in this arena was bizarre, and I don't fully understand it. Your mileage my vary**

I have a possessed Wallstreet still running stock config (233MHz, 2GB HDD, 96MB RAM)
I had the exact same issue a while back, where it would randomly lose the boot drive, and even fail to boot from CD. Resetting PRAM was always a crapshoot. Sometimes it would come out of its stupor, and sometimes not (I used the magic key-combination stenciled inside the back port door)

In the end, I narrowed it down to a dead/dying PRAM battery. The main LIon battery had long since crapped out, and the PRAM batt went shortly afterward.
The laptop would work *only* after leaving it plugged in while powered-down for several hours (which seemed to trickle-charge the PRAM battery enough to become sentient).
Running the laptop while plugged in was marginally successful.
If unplugged, it had ~30seconds of runtime before the machine would black out, and the hours o' recharging would again be necessary.
Replacement PRAM batteries can be had for ~$50 via the web. Installing them is a pain, since it's literally the heart of the machine, and its placement is duly inconvenient in the extreme. (though there are some good walkthroughs, complete with photos on the web)
In the end, I bought an iBook and kept the Wallstreet mostly for sentimental value.
Good luck!

 

[Daedalus256]

$50, I can't afford that

Well I think I narrowed down what I'm going to do with it to "Sell it for parts or something" because I have no use for a dead wallstreet that refuses to boot.

Besides, I hate it.

 

[Daedalus256]

Hey guys, you're not going to believe what just happened.


It booted from CD.

Yeah that's right. I borrowed an old OS 8.6 PowerMac G3 B&W Restore CD and it actually BOOTED FROM IT!

Now it doesn't install and kind of sits there on the Welcome to Mac OS screen but you know, it's a start and it makes me wonder if I've been using bad CDs this entire time.