OMG Some body set us up the bomb! -or- firewire is crashing my machine

the toolboithe toolboi
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I have an old 400mhz Pismo powerbook with OS9.2 and an external Maxtor 60gb drive in a firewire bridge. It has given us nothing but problems, in fact if we could go back in time it would have been cheaper to buy a new powerbook than do all the fixing and stuff that we have done.

Now we encounter yet another bizzare error, I hope that this time it doesnt signify fried components.



If we try to start up with the fire wire bridge-drive on, the computer starts up, gets to the extention loading screen, the cursor turns into a spinning ball, and eventually turns into a bomb icon. I have no clue what this is. We have tried starting with extentions off, and it still does it thus its not an extension problem, and I dont know what else to do short of backing everything up onto the firewire drive and wiping the drive.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    defiantdefiant Posts: 4,876member
    ok...



    first: do you have the newest firmware on your powerbook ? get the newest one <a href="http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75132"; target="_blank">here</a>.



    if it doesn't work, answer those questions:



    ? you have 9.2.2 ?

    ? what is that firewire "bridge" ? (hey... )

    ? how is that hard-drive formated ?
  • Reply 2 of 6
    the toolboithe toolboi Posts: 557member
    Update: We just figgured out that it isnt the hard drive, but rather the CD burner (using the same type of ATA/firewire bridge). If it is plugged in (even if the power button is turned off) and the hard drive is on, then the computer gets the bomb curser. If it is disconnected and the hard drive is on, then it loads fine.



    -Oooh... forgot about the firmware update. Will try that.

    -Got 9.2.2

    -A Firewire bridge is an external shell which allows your mac to use an ATA device. Think of it as an external case for a hard drive (the complaint about early firewire hard drives was that they were firewire ATA bridges instead of pure firewire hard drives. Since it goes through ata the speed is limited to the speed of the ATA. Of course hard drives arent fast enough to tax ATA yet...)

    The hard drive is a partitioned HFS+ (is this correct? I have been out of the mac world for so long...) drive.



    Somr misc notes:

    -Both drives have worked fine for the last 2 years or so.
  • Reply 3 of 6
    defiantdefiant Posts: 4,876member
    alright.. tell me how the firmware update worked when you did it.
  • Reply 4 of 6
    curiousuburbcuriousuburb Posts: 3,325member
    what you say!
  • Reply 5 of 6
    defiantdefiant Posts: 4,876member
    huh ?
  • Reply 6 of 6
    the toolboithe toolboi Posts: 557member
    Thee firmware, eet deed NOTHING!

    Ya, uhh... nothin. Ends up that we already had a "newer version" according to that updater.

    Also, we did find something on Apple tech support about a bunch of mac users hving various problems (all of which my dad had experienced) including firewire problems due to a mixed up powermanager. So we zapped that (similar to zapping PRAM), yet that still didnt solve the problem.



    I think that the CD burner is ****ed, my PC doesnt read it either. I gues its time ot take it out of the bridge and see if it is the bridge thats ****ed or the CD-RW its self.
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