Bringing a PowerMac G5 Quad into Service
When the UPS shipment came in late November with my newly acquired G5 it was like Christmas came early. The Power Mac G5 Quad core to the mac geek is a kin to 69 Dodge Charger to an auto enthusiast. A lot of vintage horse power. I unpacked the G5 and removed the boot drive from Dual core G5 (same era). The Quad core ran fine for about an hour. I couldn't mount the drive remotely - which I believe is another issue. Then the system fans kicked on after an hour - it got really loud! And then the system eventually froze up.
I shutdown the test, removed the boot drive, and placed it back into the original G5 dual core. I figure I have some work to do. I probably need an OS X 10.5 patch or something for the Quad core to control the thermal levels. A direct swap of drives probably caused it. So I will fresh install OS X 10.5 on spare drive and see if I have better luck in bringing this system up. It will go into service as a video (air video server 2.43 streams to ipad and ipone clients), sql database and drop box server. These machines are outdated but make great inexpensive drop box servers. If you're an intensive drop box server user you know how it can bring a system to a crawl. Our solution has been to run the drop box (powerpc v2.022) on Power Mac G5s. They're cheap, awesome, and can run a lot of software. And run Ubuntu if it is time to move on to a new OS.
I will need to set aside some time and fresh install an OS on the spare drive to see if I can get the machine to be stable without the cooling fans kicking high gear and the system locking up.
If you have any thoughts on what is going on - feel free to drop a comment.
More to come...
Hey mate I just came across your blog by complete accident. :) Firstly, kudos to you for keeping these marvellous machines in service.... despite their teething issues that were unfortunately never fully resolved, they are a fantastic unit!
ReplyDeleteI myself use a dual-core 2.0Ghz G5 as my daily machine, which was the nice cheap replacement I managed to score after my older dual-CPU single-core 2.0Ghz one started to become very problematic... It seemed quite simply to be easier in the short term to replace it with a working unit and then toy with the glitchy one in my own time. In the case of mine, it would seem to be an issue with the soldered connections on the RAM bus that is causing it's issues, which include random freezes panics and odd fan behaviour as well as failure to boot in some instances. As the G5 came about at a time when low-lead solder became mandatory in many jurisdictions when manufacturing consumer electronics, as well as ball-grid array chip interfaces which can suffer from solder quality issues at the time of manufacture, the earlier G5 boards in particular but also less commonly the later dual-core and quad core ones were known to suffer fairly high percentage failure rates early on in the piece even, many of which which have since been put down to failures of soldered joints which are more likely with low-lead or leadless flux and exacerbated by differential thermal expansion.
This being said, the quad-core models utilising the Delphi (a subsidiary of Generl Motors... enough said) cooling system were also known to suffer issues such as pump failures, leaks etc that could at best cause the cores to run overtemp and become unstable, or at worst, in the case of leaks, destroy CPU's, power supplies and/or logic boards. Some early run machines also suffered from faulty CPU temperature probes that would read over-temparature and cause random shutdowns. The later machines made use of a different brand and design of liquid cooling system that was far less troublesome and a whole lot more reliable.
It's generally accepted now that the late-2005 dual-core aircooled variants are among the most reliable overall of the G5 Powermacs, and that the early Quad-cores were among the worst. From memory, I recall reading an EveryMac article that stated an appalling failure rate within the first 12 months of about 25% give or take! That being said, theyre still a phenomenally quick machine when they are in working form for something that is now over 10 years old. Even my dual-core is fantastic... easily gutterstomps my long-derelict 2.8GHz P4 system in every task I put it too. I intend upon adding a Quad to my collection of obsolete high-end heavy metal in the near future, just because I can.
Anyway, I do not that you posted this over a year ago, so I do hope you managed to find a solution to your powertowers issues!