The Near Death of My Mac


Okay, it didn’t really die, but I got quite the scare. Actually, I got the first EVER hard crash of my Mac. I’ve never even seen this happen before on ANY of my Macs. It’s more impressive than the chimes of death (which I have seen on an old Mac in the shop many years ago).

The Mac’s been on all day — since about nine this morning. Unusual but not unprecedented for my Mac. I was sitting there burning CD-Rs of our new catalogue for people at work to check, before I declare it a Golden Master and send it off for 1000 copies. Suddenly, the screen went from normal to half brightness over a 2 to 3 second interval and the mouse and keyboard locked. In the dead center of the screen, an indented non-modal dialogue box — it wasn’t really a dialogue box but that’s my best description — appeared in dark grey with white letters. It said “Your Mac must be restarted” which was repeated in about 8 languages. The instructions said to hold the power button for 3 seconds or press the reset key*.


When the Mac restarted it informed me “OS-X unexpectedly quit, forcing the Mac to re-start” and a Report to Apple button — which I clicked this time. Are you impressed? I am. I Googled this error and found only ONE match. The Mac appears to be running fine now.

Here’s the Log for the geeks among you:

Unresolved kernel trap(cpu 1): 0x300 – Data access DAR=0x0000000026427F68 PC=0x000000000093D020


Latest crash info for cpu 1:


Exception state (sv=0x48260280)


PC=0x0093D020; MSR=0x00009030; DAR=0x26427F68; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x00940A04; R1=0x17ADB9F0; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 – Data access)


Backtrace:


0x00940A04 0x00921014 0x002E9A80 0x002EB94C 0x0008C248 0x00029234


0x000233F8 0x000ABEAC 0xFFFFFFFF


backtrace terminated – frame not mapped or invalid: 0xBFFFD650




Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):


com.apple.ATIRadeon9700(4.1.8) @0x919000


dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(1.7)@0x4cf000


dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily
(1.4.2)@0x8df000


dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(1.4.2)@0x903000


Proceeding back via exception chain:


Exception state (sv=0x48260280)


previously dumped as “Latest” state. skipping…


Exception state (sv=0x2F9CC280)


PC=0x9000B348; MSR=0x0200F030; DAR=0x09D3B006; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x9000B29C; R1=0xBFFFD650; XCP=0x00000030 (0xC00 – System call)




Kernel version:


Darwin Kernel Version 8.11.0: Wed Oct 10 18:26:00 PDT 2007; root:xnu-792.24.17~1/RELEASE_PPC


panic(cpu 1 caller 0xFFFF0003): 0x300 – Data access


Latest stack backtrace for cpu 1:


Backtrace:


0x000954F8 0x00095A10 0x00026898 0x000A8204 0x000ABB80


Proceeding back via exception chain:


Exception state (sv=0x48260280)


PC=0x0093D020; MSR=0x00009030; DAR=0x26427F68; DSISR=0x40000000; LR=0x00940A04; R1=0x17ADB9F0; XCP=0x0000000C (0x300 – Data access)


Backtrace:


0x00940A04 0x00921014 0x002E9A80 0x002EB94C 0x0008C248 0x00029234


0x000233F8 0x000ABEAC 0xFFFFFFFF


backtrace terminated – frame not mapped or invalid: 0xBFFFD650





Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):


com.apple.ATIRadeon9700(4.1.8)@0x919000


dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(1.7)@0x4cf000


dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(1.4.2)@0x8df000


dependency: com.apple.iokit.IONDRVSupport(1.4.2)@0x903000


Exception state (sv=0x2F9CC280)


PC=0x9000B348; MSR=0x0200F030; DAR=0x09D3B006; DSISR=0x42000000; LR=0x9000B29C; R1=0xBFFFD650; XCP=0x00000030 (0xC00 – System call)




Kernel version:


Darwin KepModel: PowerMac7,3, BootROM 5.1.8f7, 2 processors, PowerPC G5 (3.0), 2.5 GHz, 1 GB


Graphics: ATI Radeon 9600 XT, ATY,RV360, AGP, 128 MB


Memory Module: DIMM0/J11, 512 MB, DDR SDRAM, PC3200U-30330


Memory Module: DIMM1/J12, 512 MB, DDR SDRAM, PC3200U-30330


AirPort: AirPort Extreme, 405.1 (3.90.34.0.p18)


Modem: Jump, V.92, Version 1.0


Bluetooth: Version 1.9.5f4, 2 service, 0 devices, 1 incoming serial ports


Network Service: Built-in Ethernet, Ethernet, en0


Serial ATA Device: Maxtor 6Y160M0, 152.67 GB


Serial ATA Device: ST3160023AS, 149.05 GB


Parallel ATA Device: PIONEER DVD-RW DVR-108, 486.31 MB


USB Device: Hub, Up to 12 Mb/sec, 500 mA


USB Device: STRONG MAN KBD HUB, ALCOR, Up to 12 Mb/sec, 500 mA


USB Device: Microsoft IntelliMouse® Optical, Microsoft, Up to 1.5 Mb/sec, 100 mA


USB Device: STRONG MAN KBD HUB, ALCOR, Up to 12 Mb/sec, 200 mA


USB Device: USB Monitor, LG Electronics Inc., Up to 1.5 Mb/sec, 500 mA


USB Device: SoundSticks, harman/kardon, Up to 12 Mb/sec, 500 mA


USB Device: Bluetooth USB Host Controller, Apple, Inc., Up to 12 Mb/sec, 500 mA


USB Device: Hub, Up to 12 Mb/sec, 500 mA


FireWire Device: My Book Device, WD, Up to 800 Mb/sec


FireWire Device: Zip Ultra, Iomega, Up to 400 Mb/sec


FireWire Device: unknown_device, unknown_value, Up to 400 Mb/sec





From what I gather in reading this, it appears from all this that CPU#1 blew up with a problem between the ATI Radeon driver and the Apple IOKit with an unresolved kernel trap — frame not mapped or invalid. I have no idea what the means. I mean, I have a basic idea but no idea how that relates to what I was doing.

I also wonder if this is related to the fact that when I try and install Leopard, it tells me my drives must be formatted in “HFS Extended, Journaled” even though they are already formatted in just that way. I tried to install it on my second internal and my external drive, but in both cases Leopard first tried, then failed, and on the second attempt said the drives were not formatted properly. Screw Leopard.



*I don’t have one.

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