Prohibitory symbol on startup

[sonikbliss]

I just installed a Seritek 1V4 in my G4 466MHz along with two 250 Gig Seagate 7200.8 SATA drives attached to it.

I formatted the discs with 0SX disk utility (HFS+/Journaled w/OS9 Drivers). I partitioned one into 30G/220G partitions and installed OSX 10.3.5 on the 30G(So I can install my GD 1.8GHz DP which requires 10.3.5, which I haven't installed yet, the processor that is).

I also updated my G4's firmware to 4.2.8 as requested per the Gigadesign installation instructions. (I actually did this before I installed OSX on the new HDD).

All seemed fine, the firmware update was successful, the new drives were mounting, this was all early this afternoon. I went out for a few hours and when I got back I decided I was going to install the GD cpu upgrade, only now when I tried to startup my computer the apple logo turned to the symbol for no, (/) circle with line through it. What does this mean?

So I powered down the computer and restarted holding "option" so I could choose what drive to boot off of. I selected the OSX partition on my new drive and it booted right up. I restarted again to see if it would work (booting off of my new drive) and I got the (/) symbol again. I went through the whole process again to the same exact results.

Anybody know what the problem is? I really want to get this figured out so I can install my new processor and get back to work.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks-Jason

[ataMan]

Jason, I never did see it happening and I do not have Gigadesign upgrade, but we have similar machines. I have a theory, what it is and hopefully can help you out. Eventually I will call you. Please contact card manufacturer's support.

[sonikbliss]

I still have my original system drive (stock ATA) installed and am able to boot and reboot off it but not with the new Seagate.

I ran disk utility and verified and repaired permissions on the new hdd. Disk utility showed a bunch of stuff wrong when I checked the permissions but said it repaired them. But it's still doing the same thing. (/)

Can you tell me what you think it might be? The suspense is killing me. LOL

[ataMan]

Can you tell me what you think it might be?

It could be different scenarios; I likely neeed to call you to play through several before telling for sure. Please write to the support.

[TZ]

One thing I can say is that OS 9 can't boot from a volume larger than 195GB.

As to the rest and why you are getting the Prohibitory Sign I'd have to look in the Troubleshooting Guide for links.

[biggles]

I ran disk utility and verified and repaired permissions on the new hdd. Disk utility showed a bunch of stuff wrong when I checked the permissions but said it repaired them. But it's still doing the same thing.

Have you booted from your original OS X volume and run Repair Disk on the offending drive with Disk Utility?

[TZ]

PowerMac G4 466Mhz (Digital Audio) 1.25G RAM, 29160 UltraSCSI 160 PCI card, Digi001 LE 6.4 ,OS X 10.3.4

"Broken folder" icon, prohibitory sign, or kernel panic when computer starts

First thing I would pull would be the 29160. Then see how things go. Even with the 1.3b1 driver it may be a problem. Is the 1V4 to replace 29160? In addition?

why? data corruption, and support, and lack of current drivers. ATTO UL3S would be $$$ but more reliable. (I own 29/39160's as well as three or four ATTO cards.)

Digital Audio has enough problems of its own in the PCI architecture.

Can you upgrade past 10.3.4? that might help also. Some upgrades I've seen require 10.3.6, 10.3.9 might be preferred. Or even move to Tiger - maybe when 10.4.3 has been out a month (October?).

[sonikbliss]

I haven't booted into OS 9 except from my original startup disk, which still works.

I have booted off my original OS X volume and run disk utility. It found a few issues with the drive when I "Verified Disk Permissions" so I repaired permissions and it said everything was fixed.

As for the 29160 I actually did pull it when I installed the Seritek 1V4 since the 1V4 was intended to replace it.

As far as upgrading the OS, I'm currently on OSX 10.3.5 since that is what the minimum requirement for the Giga Designs upgrade is.


Here's a random thought:
I only am using 2 PCI slots, I have the PCI card for my Digi 001 installed in the farthest back slot ( next to the video card) but I installed the Seritek in the farthest forward slot so it's close to the internal hard drives. Am I allowed to do this? Or could this be causing the problem?

Thanks,Jason

[TZ]

Any time you install or change PCI cards (and no, I don't think it matters where) you should boot into Open Firmware and reset nvram. In fact, I would say that should be the first thing you do if you see the "/" system on startups. Should have mentioned it earlier when I first replied (and why doesn't Apple mention that in their article?).

there are a list of articles and links in Troubleshooting including one that I would look at, mac OS X doesn't boot: hardware and software troubleshooting.

... might want to update your user profile sig to reflect your current system - they are often helpful.

[M.Brane]

Here's a random thought:
I only am using 2 PCI slots, I have the PCI card for my Digi 001 installed in the farthest back slot ( next to the video card) but I installed the Seritek in the farthest forward slot so it's close to the internal hard drives. Am I allowed to do this? Or could this be causing the problem?

Thanks,Jason

The 001 is a bus-mastering card. If the Seritek is as well they could be fighting over the PCI bus. Swapping slots could solve the issue. Then again it might not.

I would do the nvram reset first, then if no go start swapping slots with nvram reset each time.

Hope that does it. If not you may just have two cards that refuse to play nice together.

[sonikbliss]

I've been corresponding with George from Firmteks tech support and I just sent this to him:

I started up holding command + s and this is what came up:

Standard timeslicing quantum is 10000 us
vm_page_bootstrap:316008 free pages
mig_table_max_displ=68
IOKit Component Version 7.5:
Thu Aug 5 19:23:49 PDT 2004;root (rcbuilder):RELEASE_PPC/iokit/RELEASE
65 prelinked modules
Copyright (c) 1982,1986,1989,1991,1993
The Regents of the University of California. All Rights Reserved

using 3276 buffer headers and 3276 cluster IO buffer headers
Local FireWire GUID=0x3065ff:0xfeel15d60
Security auditing service present
BSM auditing present
From path:"/pci@f2000000/Seri-Tek1V4@14/@4:10,\mach_kernel",Waiting
onIOPathMatchIODeviceTree:/pci@f2000000/Seri-Tek1V4@14/@4:10

Still waiting for root device

it just keeps repeating "Still waiting for root device" over and over

This is all gibberish to me, but maybe you guys can get something from it.

[TZ]

From path:"/pci@f2000000/Seri-Tek1V4@14/@4:10,\mach_kernel",Waiting
onIOPathMatchIODeviceTree:/pci@f2000000/Seri-Tek1V4@14/@4:10

Still waiting for root device

George should have some suggestions, so wait and see what he offers.

[sonikbliss]

A copy of an email I sent to George @ Firmteks tech support.

Good news, I got the Seagate drive to boot off the Seritek 1V4 card.
It seems that the OSX 10.3.5 combined update that I downloaded may
have been the issue.

I did as you suggested and zapped the pram, completely erased the
Seagate hdd I was trying to boot from, and reinstalled OSX on it.

After I first installed OSX Jaguar I restarted the computer to see if
it would boot off of that drive, and sure enough it booted right up.
So I then proceeded to install the the OSX10.3.5 combined update and
tried to boot off that drive again but this time I got the prohibitory
symbol on startup again. Damn.
So I rebooted to my original hdd, using the boot picker, and installed
the OSX10.3.9 combined update on the Seagate hdd, selected it as my
startup drive, restarted, and it booted right up.

So all is well apparently. : )

Thanks alot for your help George, I'll spread the word about how good
Firmteks tech support is.

Now to attempt to install my GD 1.8GHz DP. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. LOL

Thanks gurus for your help too.

[sonikbliss]

OK I spoke too soon cause it just happened again. DOH!!

[M.Brane]

Ouch.

Have you removed the 001? If not you might try it.

[TZ]

Maybe it was a typo, but you mention Jaguar (pure beta sometimes, especially trying to update to 10.2.8) and then mention the combined update 10.3.5.

Some people do have only an Update CD for Panther and have to have Jaguar, but you can have trouble with installing Panther over Jaguar.

I wish Apple would sell the latest version of OS X on DVD (10.3.9 or 10.4.2) sometimes. Avoid having to reinstall 200MB+ of updates. Panther lets you run multiple update/installs in one session without restart, just queue them up, try to run in the right order; and keep all your standalone updates handy (even burn them to CD/DVD).

When removing and installing PCI cards, always boot into Open Firmware and reset nvram.

Zeroing the drive is always good, but only needs to be done once, when you first install the drive.

[sonikbliss]

TZ,

I must have the Panther update only because it doesn't let me install straight from the panther discs without having Jaguar previously installed.

I did Open Firmware and reset nvram but that didn't seem to do the trick unfortunately.

If you ever get into trouble again, please
boot with the shift key down ("safe boot") and immediately apply the
FSCApp_Panther or FSCApp_Tiger (depending, what kind of OS you are
using). That usually solves the problem. It's an Apple bug...

George sent me this. I know how to safe boot but how do I "immediately apply the FSCApp_Panther"?

M.Brane,

I haven't tried removing the 001 card yet so I'll give that a shot after I try the above step.

Thanks, Jason

[kaye]

Jason,

For my SeriTek/1VE4, George sent me three Image files, FSCApp.img, SeriTek1S2_512.img, and SeriTek1VE4_512.img. The SeriTek1S2_512.img file is only necessary if a SeriTek/1S2 has ever been in the computer that a SeriTek/1V4 or SeriTek/1VE4 is going into. He also sent instructions for what order these updates should be done. In my case the SeriTek/1S2 had never been in my G5 so I did not need to do that.

When you mount (double click) the FSCApp.img file, you get a Disk Image called FSCApp. Double click that and in the window are two files, FSCAPP_Panther and FSCAPP_Tiger. Launch your choice. k

[kaye]

Here are the instructions from George:

The latest & greatest firmware is 5.1.2. Some 4-channel controllers could be using the 5.1.1
The changes between 5.1.1 and 5.1.2 are rather cosmetic - but it's important to note, if you already have an older controller (1S2, for instance), please upgrade it first to 5.1.2.

The procedure normally would be (if you have 1S2 or ever had 1S2 in your machine - MacOS-X DOES remember old installations, so an old firmware could be still in the system cache even if you do not have the card installed at the moment!)

1) running FSCApp_Tiger or FSCApp_Panther (depending on what OS you have) on empty machine (no SeriTek there)
2) putting SeriTek/1S2 inside and upgrading the SeriTek/1S2 to 5.1.2
3) running FSCApp again, switching the machine off, removing SeriTek/1S2 and installing 1VE4
4) switching the machine on, upgrading 1VE4, running FSCApp (the third time!), re-starting the machine.

NB: please do not connect any drive to the controllers which are to be flashed.

If SeriTek/1VE4 is the first our controller in your machine ever, just put it inside (no drives), turn the machine on, run the firmware upgrade and afterwards, than re-start the machine.

I dragged the Disk Image files to a folder on my boot drive and then did the dance. k

[sonikbliss]

well, I tried everything and I still can't boot off of the drive attached to the seritek.

I installed the latest firmtek firmware, ran FSCapp_panther, removed the digi 001 card, booted to Open Firmware and reset the nvram, ran FSCapp_panther again, zapped pram. And still I get the prohibitory symbol on startup.


The two Seagate 7200.8's attached to the seritek 1V4 both mount fine on the desktop when I boot from my stock system drive (attached to motherboard). So maybe i'll give up on trying to boot from one of the seagates and just get a new drive to hook up to the motherboard to boot from even though it's slower and then i'll use the seagates for storage only.

I'm pretty much at a loss right now. If anybody has any more suggestions i'd love to hear them.

Thanks-Jason