CD drive prevents boot; CD not recognized

[John Kettler]

Someone in the Invitational thread, part III suggested that I ask for help here. The problems I describe have prevented me from completing the Invitational tournament.

My 233 Mhz iMac (64 MB RAM, 2 MB VRAM on ATI Rage Pro, OS 8.6) has strange problems similar to ones I've seen before several major quakes hit. In the past I've had periods of days right before a quake in which the computer was extremely difficult to boot or wouldn't boot at all, only to mysteriously

clear hours later after being totally hung up. I've also seen it have terrible difficulties handshaking

to go online and have had some instances where the CD was in the drive, yet I kept getting told it wasn't. Usually a couple of restarts handled the last.

The computer acts squirrelly during solar flares and geomagnetic storms, too. Let the quake occur or the sun calm down, though, and the computer runs great. As soon as the Nisqually quake hit, my computer immediately reverted to its normal

ultrareliable self. I live in Southern California.

As noted in the Invitational thread, I believe at least part of this may be attributable to broadband EM emissions which lab tests by Japanese scientists have shown are emitted when granite is crushed, in turn crushing the diferent sizes, hence different frequencies,of quartz crystals embedded within it, and releasing great amounts of piezoelectricity. The tests showed that a PC exhibited all sorts of unusual behaviors while a block of granite was crushed in a giant hydraulic ram, including switching on and off spontaneously, opening and closing windows and programs. Anecdotal evidence from the Pacific Northwest prior to the Nisqually quake reported everything from minor glitches to fried PC hard drives and dead PCs. Saw no reports of dead Macs.

With the above as background, here's what's happened and what I've done to fix it.

Briefly, my iMac totally hangs up if I try to boot with the CM CD inserted. I never get to see even the Mac icon, getting nothing but blank grey screen. If I pop the CD out while my iMac's hung up, though, the icon pops out and normal boot begins. BTW, the computer is a bit sluggish, but save for the CD problem, otherwise works fine.

Worse, if I boot without the CD then insert it either during or after the boot and try to play the game, I get an error message saying I need to put the CM CD in the drive. For whatever reason, the fact that the CD's there already isn't registering on the CPU.

I've tried booting with and without the Internet, using both restarts and cold boots. I've even completely unplugged the computer, carefully checked all the connections, then rebooted. No joy.

I've rebuilt the Desktop twice, both times trashing the Finder Prefs. No joy. And I've repeatedly cleaned the computer with iClean. Nada.

My sense is that somehow CPU cycles are being "stolen" thus hamstringing my iMac as it tries to boot with the CD in the drive (CD has no scratches; drive won't read CDs period; checked read lens with magnifier and found no contaminants on its surface). The boot process with the CD in sounds like the computer's going all out, but simply doesn't have enough oomph to get the job done. The boot sound without the CD in is much quieter and obviously less stressful to the equipment.

Has anyone else had problems like mine? Does anyone have a proven serious solution or a potentially good idea to resolve these incredibly aggravating problems which are not only delaying the Invitational but are causing me severe CM withdrawal? I'm a patient man, but these have been so galling I nearly took a hammer to the computer

in total frustration.

Thanks for any and all help.

Sincerely,

John Kettler

[Schrullenhaft]

Before you launch CMBO does the icon for the CD appear on the desktop ? In other words are you giving your computer enough time to recognize and read the CD ? Do you have problems reading any CD's with your drive (other than CM) ?

During the boot process where you have the CD in the iMac before you boot, I assume that it is trying to boot off of the CD as if it were a System Disk. That's only a guess however and I have no idea why it doesn't automatically start reading the hard drive when it can't find any boot code on the CM CD. You can try this with another CD and see what your Mac does.

[kmead]

My, my John you are having a time of it. As for the earthquake related problems some of my Caltech aquaintances would strongly debate the relationship. I think I know exactly what is wrong but first...

First things first. Is the computer plugged into a properly grounded outlet. My rev B iMac was very sensitive to this. Next I would reset the parameter RAM. This can be done using the correct key combo during start up or more safely using Techtool Lite (downloadable as a evaluation copy http://www.micromat.com/ ). I prefer the Techtool method as it writes a copy of the PRAM to disk so if you need it you can reload it. Next ensure the hard drive is indeed the startup drive. Turn off Virtual Memory under the Memory Control Panel. This is done by opening the Startup Disk Control Panel and ensuring the HD is the start up disk. Reinstall the OpenGL 1.2.2 update that you get with the CMBO 1.12 update. Now restart and rebuild your desktop. Once you have restarted look at how much room you have on your hard drive free. If you are under 200 MB start chucking stuff (OK back stuff up and clean off your HD to make some headroom). Check to see how much ram your Mac OS is using. If it is not leaving enough overhead for CM you can have bad things happen. I strongly suggest you have at least 190Mb of physical RAM to run the system, CMBO, and your web browser.

Now this is what I think your problem is ( I had the exact same problem you are suffering): You have a bad memory chip or one of your memory chips should be reseated . My 128Mb chip was bad and was causing all sorts of funky behavior. I replaced it (after unneccessarily formatting the hard drive, taking the beast apart several times to check connections) and it has run perfectly ever since. The early rev iMacs are a bit difficult to open up but it can be done safely and easily. So, you may think this is a bit drastic, but it is what worked for me.

I will post this and will go and gather some of the links to get techtool and how to open up your iMac (while you are at it go to CompUSA and buy a 20 GB harddrive on sale for $50 and install it at the same time you have it open). To open up your iMac:

http://machardware.about.com/blramin.htm

or:

http://www.theimac.com/upgrade.shtml

It isn't really as bad as they make it seem.

Good luck and let me know if I can do anything else.

Karl [

[ March 14, 2002, 07:02 AM: Message edited by: kmead ]

[John Kettler]

kmead and troops,

I painstakingly went through all the PRAM resetting (logged and reentered the settings), Desktop rebuilding, Finder Pref trashing and the like. I killed virtual memory for a time as well, but didn't mess with the Open GL thing because I didn't know what to do. Zero results as before, together with an insufficient memory flag, which I cured by allocation 65 MB of virtual memory. My iMac was no better after a great deal of work, so I went to bed.

Get this. I got up this morning and booted afresh, with the CD not inserted. Booted fine. After boot was complete, I tried putting in the CD. Would you believe that it worked (showed CM CD icon) for the first time in what may be weeks? Not only that, but the game actually ran. Woo hoo. NOT. No sound.

I tried every trick and checked all the sound controls. Everything was right. I did a restart with the CD out to kind of kickstart whatever was stuck, only to find that once again the CD drive wasn't registering on the CPU's awareness. That was where things were when I had to leave the area or smash the computer. The latest wrinkle is that I tried again post reboot a little while ago and this time had sound from the beginning (wait for it!) but again got the no CD detected message. Am about ready to entertain the notion the thing's possessed!

Regards,

John Kettler

[ March 15, 2002, 12:08 AM: Message edited by: John Kettler ]

[kmead]

John,

How much actual memory do you have? Virtual memory is a really buggy way process that doesn't work well with games in particular. On all my Macs (2 here and the 15 I am the admin for at work) virtual memory is always off. If you have under 96Mb or physical ram, it will be very hard for your computer to run multiple apps at the same time.

When was the last time you cleaned your CMBO CD? Is it shiny clean with no fingerprints on the underside? If it is dirty run warm water over it, squirt some dishsoap on it and softly rub it with your fingers and rinse it with warm water. Shake it primarily dry and then pat it the rest of the way dry with a soft clean towel. Do not use a circular motion in any of theses activities.

When was the last time you did a reinstall of the system OS? You can do this without reformatting your HD. It will take fifteen minutes or so to do and can reap great benefits. Your iMac came with the CDs needed to do this. If you choose to go this route I can send you more complete directions to do this. Also for your computer I suggest OS 8.6 as the overhead of 9.x and beyond is a bit much for your computer and will consume alot more ram.

As for the Open GL installer, it comes with the CMBO 1.12 upgrade you can download from the CMBO site here: http://www.battlefront.com/downloads/index.html , once it is unpacked you will see a folder for OpenGL1.2.1. Open that and double click on the install icon whichh looks like a page with a down turned corner and what looks like a floppy disk on it. It will unpack itself and make a icon on your desktop that says OpenGL Installer, double click that and install.

I still suspect that you have a memory error, it is fairly rare, but your computers inconsistent behavior indicates that it might be. I will look around the web today to find a memory tester utility, your mac does check the memory at start up but mine didn't find the problem. In my case I would get all manner of frustrating crashes, incomplete startups, and so on.

I am off to work, and later go with a cub scout pack to sleep on the USS Silversides (a WW2 fleet class submarine) so I will check back sometime on Saturday. I hope all goes well.

[John Kettler]

kmead and troops,

As noted earlier, I have 64MB RAM. Historically, this has been enough to run the game while still in my E-mail program. Otherwise, AAR production would be even harder.

The good news (see Invitational thread Part III) is that I have at least enough functioning now in my iMac that I was able to buy troops and send the buy to Treeburst155. So far, it still doesn't boot with the CD in the drive, but at least I can play CM again.

Thanks for all your help. Will look into some of the other procedures when I have more grey cells online!

Regards,

John Kettler

[John Kettler]

There have been some major developments in my tale of cyberwoe, some good. Others are driving me and my foes crazy in the Invitational.

March 16 brought California its largest quake, a 4.8) in many months and me the restoration of my computer to full working order within hours of the quake. The quake was at my latitude and about 70 miles west of me, striking north of Santa Barbara Island. Alas, the good times didn't last long!

March 25 saw not only the unexpected return of the previous problem (hadn't learned yet how to make a disk image) but the appearance of a nasty new one. Out of nowhere, Communicator 4.5 became frighteningly unstable, kicking out weird "memory's filling up" messages even with nothing else open, followed by partial window corruption, freeze and crash. Sometimes I was able to send out partially done posts and return later to edit them, but other times the post simply vanished into the ether or was lost in a sudden crash. Saving to Clipboard didn't cut it either. All told, I lost at least four major posts, and I'm not a fast typist. Certain posts took me upwards of four logins to complete. Communicator would also crash with no warning during routine online activities.

Whatever was causing that problem seems to have gone away, but I again have the earlier unread CD drive problem. I have done all kinds of different reboots, plugged and unplugged the computer, rebuilt the Desktop and trashed the finder Prefs. I even reset the PRAM. No joy.

I obtained the latest virus definitions for Norton Antivirus for Macintosh and went through the entire hard drive twice, finding no viruses or worms either time.

Today I disemboweled the iMac in order to obtain its PRAM battery for replacement. I took the entrails with me to Radio Shack to make sure there were no surprises, returning with the identical twin of the one the troops on the Apple iMac Usage

board had suggested might be the problem (dead PRAM battery). After a certain amount of cursing and standing on my head, I got the chassis back in, having checked every plug and lead I could find. Everything was tight, and the computer booted as before--no CD drive recognition, though. It spins up just fine. As before, the iMac seems to work hard trying to read the drive, but it somehow doesn't have quite enough oomph (really whines) to make it happen. By contrast, after the March 16 4.8, the CD spun up effortlessly and was showing its screen icon almost instantly.

Not only am I baffled and thoroughly torqued, but this problem, whatever its source may be, is not only preventing me from completing a game in progress against TexasToast, but is keeping the Invitational from completion, for I have two more foes after TexasToast.

Have so far managed to avoid smashing computer outright, a good thing since I was on deadline for a since completed article, but it hasn't been easy.

Has anyone had any brilliant ideas since last time?

I suppose I could open the patient again and check the memory chips for seating, but everything looked

rock solid in that regard.

Regards,

John Kettler

[mchlstrt]

FWIW the bad memory idea sounds like a good bet to me. I'm sort of the 'shadetree Mac mechanic' in my tribe & I hit that recently. Kind of random, erratic behaviour on a G4 that seemed to come & go. Techtool showed no problem after the usual flip a bit here or there pass. New Macs come with a diagnostic CD & I ran that on a lark. This is not DiskDocter. Nailed it as a mem prob & when they took it in to the real guys they confirmed it. I don't know if your machine came with a seperate disk but you should have MacCheck or somesuch in there somewhere, & run the h'ware tests in techtool lite if you haven't. But like I said, this didn't show up in Techtool Pro.

[John Kettler]

Troops,

Perhaps we'll soon know, for I'm taking the iMac in for technical tests tomorrow. Am hoping the problem's quickly locatable and cheaply fixable. Will let you know what is found.

Thanks for your help!

Regards,

John Kettler