Hi All,
I am attempting to help a member of our Mac User Group with an issue he has with his PPC 5200CD. I am stumped but hoping that I am missing the forest for the trees, so to speak.
The problem is that this machine refuses to boot up in OS 9.0 unless one holds the Shift key down to turn off all Extensions. If one fails to do this, one gets a "Bus Error" or "Illegal Instruction" bomb on boot up.
After mucking about with his original OS folder, I have today installed a Clean System OS 9.0 on his internal hard drive and get exactly the same problem. I have tried using Extensions Manager Control Panel to set his machine to OS 9 Base as well as to OS 9 All, but in neither case will this allow the machine to boot. The only solution is to hold down the Shift key.
The owner relates that this machine USED to run OK on OS 9.0, which his daughter installed on it some months ago and then left with her Installer CD. He had begun to notice that the machine would crash with one of these "Bus Error" dialogs after it had been in use for a couple of hours. In fact, he had begun to think that he had a hardware cooling problem because in his mind it would always take about two hours for the machine to crash, regardless whether he used that time to work with it or just left it sitting there.
By the time I got involved, this machine was either crashing during boot or within a few minutes of boot. Currently I am no longer able to get it to boot at all, except using the aforementioned Shift key down approach.
While I am not used to seeing such an old machine running OS 9.0, the Apple specifications site does suggest that OS 9 should be OK on this machine. I did find it interesting that the machine will boot from an OS 9.0 installer CD but will not boot from an OS 9.2 installer CD. The latter will produce a crash while it is trying to boot, while the OS 9.0 CD works.
In fact, it was the fact that this Mac would boot from the OS 9.0 CD but not from the OS 9.0 internal hard drive which led me to try loading a Clean OS 9.0 System Folder on that internal hard drive, but as mentioned this did not help.
My next step is going to be to take an external hard drive to my friend's house and attempt to boot his Mac from it, using something like OS 8.6.1. If that works, then I will take the steps necessary to take his internal hard drive back down to OS 8.6.1 and try that. If that works, then I will conclude that this particular Mac does not like OS 9.0. If his Mac crashes trying to boot off OS 8.6.1 from the external hard drive, I am going to conclude that he has some kind of hardware problem but not on his internal hard drive. If his Mac boots fine from OS 8.6.1 on my external, but fails to boot properly from OS 8.6.1 installed on his internal hard drive, I am going to conclude that he has some odd problem with his internal hard drive. Oh, I should have mentioned that I have run Disk First Aid and Disk Warrior on his internal hard drive and neither found any issues nor improved the condition.
Also in the course of doing all this, I have had his motherboard out a few times. I have checked to be sure the RAM and ROM are seated properly. I was also concerned about the fact that he only had 48 Megs of RAM so I exchanged his 16 Meg SIMM for a spare 32 Meg SIMM I had lying around. He now has 64 Megs of RAM and I have Virtual Memory turned on and set to 96 Megs, but I do not know if the problem could be that he simply needs more RAM to run properly under OS 9.
At this stage, then, I am just posting this message in case anyone can think of something I should be doing that I have not thought of.
Thanks!
Jim Foster President Macintosh Users East [MaUsE] http://www.mause.ca
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