Mac Forum / General / Hardware / August 2006

The CD tray opened on its own??

Palindr?me <me9@privacy.net> wrote:

I don't know where this "966" model name came from.

Judging from what you said the previous post, the correct description
for your computer is a "Power Macintosh 9600/350", which should be
written on a label on the front of it.

The "350" part refers to the CPU speed, and as the CPU is on a
daughterboard it is possible that the computer might have been upgraded
to a faster CPU at some point (you could get various G3 and possibly
even G4 processor upgrades for models of that ilk).

(Incidentally, I have an 8600/250, which looks almost identical to the
9600 externally but has some different features.)

Nobody else seems to have ventured a useful answer yet, so here goes...

When you power on a Mac, one of the first things that should happen is
you hear a "startup chime". The exact sound varies between models, but
for a 9600 it is a multi-tone chord which goes on for about a second.

If the machine contains a lot of RAM, the startup chime might be delayed
for a few seconds due to the RAM test.

If you can't hear this chime after waiting several seconds, the computer
probably isn't starting up correctly. There could be all sorts of
reasons for this.

Another possible explanation for lack of startup chime is that the
speaker isn't connected, or the nonvolatile setting for the system
volume is set to mute the speaker, or there is something plugged into
the audio output, which automatically mutes the speaker, and the
external sound output isn't working properly (e.g. some monitors with
built-in speakers don't output any sound until the monitor powers on).

It might fail to start up if it doesn't think there is a monitor
connected.

If the computer has found a serious fault during its startup test, it
might play a "death chime" sound, which is sort of like breaking glass.

After the startup chime, the video signal starts to be generated. A
monitor which wakes up when it gets a video signal should activate at
this point.

The video display normally starts out showing a grey background while
the Mac searches for a startup volume. If a valid startup volume is
found, it should show a "happy Mac" icon in the middle of the screen. If
the boot fails, the happy Mac might change to a disk icon with a cross
through it. If no startup volume can be found, the computer will display
a disk icon with a flashing question mark.

Since you haven't got as far as video output, that is the first item to
tackle, but at this point it is difficult to tell whether the Mac is
even starting up (beyond powering the fans, power light, CD-ROM drive
and hard drive).

Assuming the monitor supports standard VGA mode (640x480, 60 Hz), it
should work as long as you have configured the adapter correctly.

The 9600 uses a video card installed in a PCI slot, so its behaviour
might be somewhat different to the built-in video in other Mac models.
I'm more familiar with built-in video on machines of this era.

Probably the best place to start would be to open up the machine and try
to identify what video card it is using. The standard card supplied with
the 9600 was apparently an IX Micro Twin Turbo.

If there are any other PCI cards in there, it might be a good idea to
remove them in case they are preventing the computer from starting up
(e.g. due to some missing external component, or a hardware fault).

If it still won't start up with just the video card in the PCI slots,
then you might like to try removing most of the RAM: take it down to a
single DIMM in the A1 slot, which is likely to be one of the ones
originally supplied by Apple with the machine.

You can run the 9600 with any mixture of RAM sizes in any slots - Macs
generally have a very user-friendly memory controller.  For the 9600
there is a performance benefit in having matching pairs in the
corresponding A and B slots of the same number.

You have to start somewhere.