Pismo internal drives not recognized

[RedMartianDucky]

As most of these stories start, I found a laptop at a yard sale.
I'm a PC tech (A+) and I was looking for a project, she said she was trying to upgrade to OSX and the laptop stopped powering on, found forums that mentioned the PRAM, unplugged it, hit the power button, it chimed it had a Norton Utilities CD that it booted from, but I couldn't find the hard drive listed the DVD drive started booting intermittently from the Norton, finally stopped booting entirely all I got was a ?/smiling Mac
found out about OF started digging into that but still I couldn't access the drives, put in a new hard drive (assuming drive was bad) still nothing,Found an external USB CD drive (at a yard sale) booted with it and I had a recognized drive, hooked hard drive up with a USB adapter, recognized.
Now I believe the only thing to do is replace the Mobo, unless you guys have any ideas, I won't ask if this is worth fixing, I'm starting to take this personally, and where can I get OS 9 just for testing purposes?

[unclemac]

Howdy and welcome,

OK, so the drive you added but that the Mac could not see did work OK outside the PB, yes?

Two things to check regarding your replacement HD:

1. Older Macs need the boot drive jumpered to Master.
2. Apple's tools for initializing (formatting) a drive is not as robust as what you are used to with Win, so it is best to erase--unformat--the drive in a PC, if it is currently something else like NTFS.

Besides that, need to know which model Mac (this one?), and which OS you are working with. Details help.

Sounds like a project......

[RedMartianDucky]

First yes that is the model but mine's 500Mhz, I forgot to mention that I bought a new internal HD ribbon online but it didn't change the symptoms, the drives are jumpered master, the drives were formatted with Macdrive7 as HFS+, I haven't got a Mac OS to put on (was going to run Linux) can I just get basic system files to put on the drive or will I need to find a full install?

[M.Brane]

While an OS install disk from another PB might do the trick it's best to have the one for that model or a full retail install disk. Kinda hard to find these days though. Maybe ebay, but that can be iffy.

I run OS 10.4.9 on my Pismo. It's a bit sluggish, but it works fine. Had no problems installing it. Unless you need 9 for some reason you might be better off to find a Tiger install disk.

[unclemac]

10.4 or 10.3 would be your best bet....if you want to run a Mac OS. Going Linux.....do you need Mac media at all? Sorry not done a full native install, so not much help.

Are you up to speed with PPC Linux options? I would consider loading a Mac OS to be sure the hardware is stable, but that's my comfort level.

[RedMartianDucky]

Since it's not "seeing" the internal drives at all I'm not even at the point of installing anything, I was mostly wondering if this is a common problem with these mobos or if someone has any other hardware ideas.

this mobo is going out the window anyway; I'm going to take it out and give it a once over, does anyone out there have a detailed schematic for these mobos so I won't go in totally blind?

[unclemac]

Just to be clear: you have booted to OS 10 CD/DVD, and fired up Disk Utility (the installer won't do it for you....lame), and DU sees no internal drive?

[RedMartianDucky]

the only time it sees a drive is when it's on a USB port, it sees nothing internally.

a couple of times right after I got it to power up it booted from the DVD, and the only mac disk I have is a Norton Utilities CD that came with it.

Norton only saw the DVD I couldn't find the HD at all, the DVD started working intermittently, the PB now doesn't see it at all.

booted with the option key, had no drives listed at all what-so-ever.

I then used a USB CD drive with the (option) boot, it saw the CD, used the USB --> 2.5" drive adapter on the PB, it saw the drive, I put the original drive on the USB and it was recognized as well.

I can now boot with the Norton CD in the USB drive, I don't have an OS disk so I can't do a whole lot with the HD's right now, other than install Norton.

[M.Brane]

Could be a connection problem or the on-board ATA controller could be toast.

Could also be that the optical drive is causing problems on the bus. Have you tried with it disconnected? That's easy on a Pismo: just flip the release, and remove the drive. I have had bad optical drives cause no boot/hang on boot before.

[RedMartianDucky]

same symptoms with DVD out.

[unclemac]

Forgot to post it........here is a great source for a take apart guide, plus parts: ifixit.com.

Would be handy if you did have 10.3 or 10.4 for testing with etc. Have you considered rounding up the media? How much RAM does the PB have? If less than 512, I would lean towards 10.3.

[RedMartianDucky]

Thanks for the guide.

I 'm not sure I want to spend a couple hundred bucks on software I might not be able to use, I've not been able to find any mac guys around here to borrow it from.

It's only got 128

[unclemac]

I can round up and send you a surplus 10.3 CD if you want to go that route, only cost you a couple bucks for mail. Might have some old RAM too.....

Without at least 256, skip any OS X.

[RedMartianDucky]

That would be great, I'll PM you about that.

Do you have any ideas about the logic board?

[unclemac]

What Brane said. Remove other devices that may be on that bus (the optical drive may be setup as slave, or it may have its own....I don't know about this model). Looks like you did aleady.

If we are sure the drive won't show up on the bus, and you have ruled out: jumper, connections, cable, and the drive itself, Master/Slave issues on the bus then you are on to ATA controller......or something else on the board, right? FWIW, I do't think I have ever seen an ATA bus die on a Mac laptop. Weird.

That only other variable I see is actually using Apple's tools to initialize the drive. Have used MacDrive over the years on lots of floppies, flash drives and zips, but never to format a boot drive. Always worked great with both platforms, so I would expect it to be fine.....but on the other hand, Apple used to be much less open and much more particular about hardware, configs than they are these days. They used to design and build hardware and software assumning you would never use a different OS. They have come along way in the last few years, but older machines are more finicky in general...so it is possible that it just doesn't like HFS+ from MacDrive for booting?

If you had a firewire HD available, you could also try that for a test install to test booting to a different bus.

Will start looking for old OS disks and RAM.

[unclemac]

if your still out there redmartian, shoot me an email should you want a care package.

[RedMartianDucky]

sorry I'll get that to you right now.

[unclemac]

No worries, I am just easily distracted......and lose track of things. Been a flake. Trying to do better.

[MadDog]

If I recall correctly, the Pismo requires an ATA-5 type drive, ATA-6 will not work.

Mad Dog

[RedMartianDucky]

but that doesn't explain the original DVD drive not being recognized.

unclemac, did you get that message