[rescue] Mac diagnosis

[Phil Stracchino]

On Tue, Mar 09, 2004 at 08:36:59PM -0800, Kirill Levchenko wrote:
> On Tuesday, March 9, 2004, at 05:41  PM, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> 
> >So:  Any speculations on what's dead?  Blown video?  Dead motherboard?
> >Zapped ROM?  I'm assuming either of the latter would preclude the 
> >chime.
> 
> The fact that you hear a chime indicates that the CPU (and some 
> memory?) is okay, since I believe it takes the CPU to make the chime. 
> Try holding down
> 
> 	Command-Option-P-R

OK, I thought I remembered that one.  It's a heck of an endeavor trying
to get all those four keys AND hit the power key.  When's the critical
time for PRAM reset?  It's the first five seconds after power-on, right?
And IIRC, it *should* reboot and chime again after resetting the PRAM?

> when rebooting. (The command key is the one with the apple) This resets 
> the PRAM. If that does not work: You may have a damaged the monitor or 
> the video card. Try restarting while holding down
> 
> 	Command-Option-O-F

This one I didn't know about, and will try it.  What's the earliest Mac
model that has OpenFirmware?

> which places you in OpenFirmware, after doing system checks. You won't 
> see anything if your video is dead, but after some time (30 sec), type 
> "reset-all" and press enter. This should restart the machine, and you 
> should hear a chime, which will indicate that it *is* just the video 
> that is dead.

I'll try that.

> If this is the case, and you determine that you've damaged the on-board 
> video by trying another monitor, then the computer is still useable. 
> You can use another video card, or use it headless via serial console.

Should a PCI Mac be able to use just any PCI video card?  If so, I have
a number of spares around of various types (a couple of S3 Trio64Vs
and a Matrox Millennium II).


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