wiredfool

I’ve been working on resurrecting a g4 cube that decided to graze off a cliff sometime after the update to 10.2.x. I’ve seen a couple of other people having similar problems, but no conclusive results from all the various mac hardware voodoo procedures. Most of the problems appear to be centered on open firmware.

• On boot, it dumps into Open Firmware
• It’s possible to continue out of it by typing “mac-boot”.
• If it’s set to boot to 9.x, it hangs with a gray screen.
• It won’t even boot 9.1 off of an iPod.
• If set to boot OSX, it will boot
• Pressing C on exit from open firmware allows booting off of the cd. (only had OSX install disks, not sure about 9.x)
• None of the power buttons work, so once the machine is shut down, you need to unplug, wait and replug to restart it.
• Open firmware is set auto-boot=true and boot-command=mac-boot, so I don’t see why it’s dropping into console.

I’ve tried pulling the pram battery, but as I didn’t have the correct replacement, I didn’t get to replace it. I am guessing that that will solve the power button issue. resetting PRAM didn’t help the open firmware at all.

Googling afterward, it appears that the correct sequence for resetting nvram is “reset-nvram \n set-defaults \n reset-all” from the Open Firmware console. I’m also thinking of trying the cuda button if I can find it with a torx screwdriver.

Apparently useful links:
symptom vs cure more
more
a possible success
cuda switch location a faq