[geek] Poor ivanova!

[lwood]

Some months ago, my cat George walked on the keyboard of ivanova, my trusty five-year-old iBook. Either as a direct result of this, or because he drew my attention to the screen, I saw on it the Grey Transparent Window of Death. Most Mac folks will never have seen it, but it's charcoal grey and informs you that You Will Shut Down Now.



What choice had I? I shut down and restarted, and the cat got a flying lesson. When ivanova booted up into OS X, it would get most-of-the-way, then go to a turquoise screen and enter some advanced, enlightened state. It was obviously an advanced, enlightened state because it wouldn't actually, oh, respond to stimuli anymore, just be blue.

It wouldn't boot into safe mode, it wouldn't boot from CD -- it would chew thoughtfully on the CD for a bit, and very nearly boot, then go back to booting from the hard disk drive (hdd), which is, as I say, a non-starter.

I tried several things; booting without the keyboard attached, booting every command-option-xyz combination that could pertain. Hel, I even diddled in the firmware, which took me back to my old days, playing with Sun SPARCstations.

After leaving it to collect dust for a few months, I, still thinking that George might've had something to do with all of this, and that the disk was somehow corrupted, decided that the next logical step would be to extract the hdd, put it into some desktop chassis, and reload the OS.

I peered under the keyboard, realised that this probably wouldn't be easy, so it sat and collected dust until I got up the gumption to actually figure out how to extract the #%)(* hard drive.

Did that. O, ye faint of heart, go not to this site, for verily thou wilt discover how to extract the hard drive from mine iBook.

Took me... two hours to take out all the wee bits, tape the screws to the paper (a maze of itty bitty Philips-head screws, all different), and get to the well-shielded prize.

In retrospect, I should have tried to boot from it, I might've wanted something from that drive, but oh well. It went smoothly into DLP's G4 tower chassis (once the adapter was on), and the reinstall went without a hitch. I even put on the first batch of patches.

Then putting it all back together, followed by taking it most of the way back apart because I'd put the hinges on wrong, followed by back-together-with-right-hinges.

...

IT BOOTED! Oh, frabjous day! Callo, callay! It did wireless things! I paraded it around in triumph and took it home! Once it was home, I hooked it up to my USB mini-hub, an external keyboard, its power source, and ordered it to download the next set of patches.

This, it did. Mostly. There was one wee patch what had a red ! instead of a green checkmark, but eh, I'd get that on the flip side, I'd...

George was in my arms, demanding attention with his bedroom eyes (do not doubt that a cat may have bedroom eyes until you, Gentle Reader, have seen George). One paw was, in fact, on the enter key of the number pad of the external keyboard.

And on the screen.

THE SCREEN!

...the transparent grey window of death. You WILL Shut Down Now.

I shut it down. I started it back up.

It got most of the way through booting, then entered an advanced, enlightened state in soothing turquoise hues. It looked to cycle between two nearly-identical turquoise screens, actually, which I believe an artifact of the OS upgrade. It will not boot from CD, it chews on the CD awhile and then tries to boot from the hard drive. I tried every command-option-xyz that might apply -- wouldn't go into safe mode, single-user reported some very mild hdd errors on a fsck (once I fscked the right thing).

After wondering if it might be due to the mini-USB hub or the external keyboard (it made no sense, and disconnecting made no difference), I yanked the aftermarket RAM to see what'd happen, which launched ivanova from "an advanced enlightened state" and right off the damn wheel as far as I know... because now it's a grey screen flashing the Icon of the Unfound System Folder: a flashing ? alternating with the OS 9 System Folder icon.


This is not good. This is, in fact, bad. It's somewhere between "very useful" and "necessary" to have a laptop of some kind when DLP and I light out for Indiana and Ontario next month, and I'm fresh out of ideas and and even further out on cash. ardaniel suggested running it by one of the Geniuses at the Apple Store, but our mutual best guess is something deeply wrong somewhere on the main logic board -- IDE controller likely, given the symptoms, and briefly lulled into functionality for some unknown reason. eBay has a couple iBooks in the $50-$100 range that I could repurpose, I suppose, if I trusted eBay not to screw me (no offense, bright_valkyrie).

Any ideas? Sympathy? Offers of cheap laptops, preferably (ha!) Macs?

-- Lorrie

Comments

[witchchild]

I could link if you want? I think there's a few mac geeks on my FL.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

I"ve got some too, but go ahead.

Bleargh!

-- Lorrie

[saskia139.livejournal.com]

*I* think you just need to keep the cat away from it. *g*

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Yeah, except that in a house with three cats who all know that the computers are where the warmth and energy are, that's unlikely...

-- Lorrie

[bergtagen.livejournal.com]

I'd offer you mine, but my own computer woes are still ongoing. Sounds like eBay may be your best bet. On the other hand, as a working writer who's on the road as often as she is, DLP really ought to have a reliable laptop of her very own, and it'd be a tax deductible work related expense, so yay!

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Yeah, except she's deathly afraid to take anything worth significant money on a trip, laptops especially. OTOH, she's now up to a Palm Pilot, a cell phone and now an iPod, for which she complained just last week.

If she reeeeally needed to take notes or write, there's her palm with its keyboard, although we haven't a modem or wireless card for it, so it can't get online.

-- Lorrie

[arimathea.livejournal.com]

Have you tried replacing the hard drive?

[lwood.livejournal.com]

My feeling at this point, seeing as the hard drive performed flawlessly in another machine, is that it's not that -- it won't boot from CD either, for example, whereas if it were the hard drive's problem it should be able to boot from CD and then complain when I examine the hard drive.

Good thought, though!

-- Lorrie

[illuviel.livejournal.com]

Gods know i'm not the tech savviest and can't help you in that way, but you've defintely got my sympathy. I wish you luck and hope you can find a cheap, elegant, easy and quick solution to your dilemma.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

-- L

[lysana.livejournal.com]

I have a spare iBook I could loan to you for the trip, at least. I don't know how badly you'd want to adopt it, as the screen is slowly dying (starts up red but changes into a slightly darker shade of normal during boot) and the keyboard's getting fussy, especially on the N key. It's a tangerine clamshell and has been taken apart and re-assembled twice. Has two screws sticking out of the back. Depending on what model of iBook you have, your power supply might work with it and would have to, as its hockey puck just died. The CD drive's also a little persnickety. But it runs, and the apps work, and I could wipe the drive of my stuff and at least get 10.3.9 on it (Tiger requires a DVD drive).

[lwood.livejournal.com]

My iBook is a blueberry clamshell -- and if your hdd is 6MB and the overall beast doesn't have FireWire, then they're likely the same vintage. I'd be more inclined to want to scavenge the logic board from yours and see if it worked in mine (as all the parts you cited as working poorly for you work great for me!), except that logic board removal was the only thing that was more of pain in the arse than the hard drive, as by the time one's reached the hdd, one's nearly excavated the logic board!

Good thought, though, and I'll keep it in mind. Thanks!

-- Lorrie

[lwood.livejournal.com]

GB! Six GB!

[lysana.livejournal.com]

My original HD was 6 GB (one of the takeaparts I mentioned was to upgrade it to 10). And you'd be welcome to scavenge the logic board. My intentions for the critter due to owning a newer iBook is to turn it into a notebook carrying case or somesuch ironic second wave tech thing like that. The challenge would be breaking it down because of those two odd screws I mentioned, but since I'm not too concerned about how those survive the experience, it might not be such a bad thing.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

I'll think about it -- I'm rather disgusted with the whole affair at the moment and don't want to look at the fscking #8 Torx wrench...

-- Lorrie

[wedgex.livejournal.com]

But it runs, and the apps work, and I could wipe the drive of my stuff and at least get 10.3.9 on it (Tiger requires a DVD drive).

Apple will, I think for a small fee, take your purchased Tiger install dvd and replace it with install cd's. The main limiting factor on 10.4 is whether or not your machine has firewire, at least according to Apple.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

My iBook would be disqualified anyway, in that case, as it has neither. 8-(

-- L

[wodandis.livejournal.com]

I don't have advice to offer, but I have loads of sympathy and will send good-working-computer vibes your way. Sassy walks on my keyboard all the time, and the worst that's happened yet is an annoying beeping. :(

And I don't doubt the bedroom eyes thing; Zerk's got that down to a science, too. It must be a male black cat thing.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

George is large and lean, and there're starting to be a few white hairs amidst the black, which may, in fact, be chocolate brown with black stripes, because it looks like that in bright light...

-- Lorrie

[wodandis.livejournal.com]

Zerk is tall and lean too, and even though he's neutered he's the most masculine animal we have in the house. He's just about a year old, but has a white hair here and there. The rest of his fur looks dark, dark chocolate instead of black if you see it in the right light. But the overall impression is very much "black panther"; even his face is more pantherish than housecatlike.

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Wow, George has a clone -- who knew?

He also used to have far fewer white hairs (except for a patch on his tummy) except as he gets closer to ten, more are growing in: his paws look like hedipped them in flour, for example, but shook most of it off.

-- Lorrie

[thorolf.livejournal.com]

Yech, blarg - serious suckage. The museum I work for has a number of Mac laptops (iBook, one generation after the fruit-colored ones), and all of them had to go in for motherboardectomies, in batches, due to an unfortunate tendency for that model to catch fire or somesuch (I never observed the phenomenon myself - I'm not the designated Mac geek). There's talk of selling off the lot and replacing them, but that won't be happening in time for Trothmoot unfortunately.

Glad to hear I'm not the only geek that will be bringing a laptop to Trothmoot, though... Admittedly, I learned that trick from Bill B. at Dragonfest some years before I had one of my own (a laptop, that is). I've even got a power inverter that plugs into the spare outlet in the back of the Subaru... Any wireless hotspots in Lincoln State Park? :)

[lwood.livejournal.com]

Well, the first time I brought ivanova to Trothmoot, I wound up taking notes at a meeting of members who were in IT, which wound up being one of the things that led to me becoming Nerd-Dis.

The second time, it turned out that the priestess who was supposed to be officiating a wedding had left the script at home! I had the laptop, the knowhow to make it talk to damnnearanything, and my name on the rental car's papers, so...

We tried the nearby library, but they wouldn't let us just hook up to their network and I couldn't quite get to the priestess's e-mail account from what they'd let me have access to (this was before most major ISPs had webmail access!). I wound up at a nearby truck stop, where the waitresses were too happy to explain that yeah, all the phones came off the wall, and here, this is the booth with the jack, just step right up! Someone back at the site had a printer, and the wedding came off without a hitch.

I wouldn't want to go online at Trothmoot -- at most I'd take a few notes and only go online between Trothmoot and Wic-Can Fest, at which DLP and I are Scheduled to Appear, which is precisely when such would be useful...

-- Lorrie