G3 taking a long time to power up!

Doris wrote on :
I just read yesterday's group of 4 posts regarding this. I have EXACTLY the same problem!!! Except, mine WON'T go away. I have tried all the suggestions, including zapping pram a million times, getting a NEW pram battery, unhooking everything, "forcing mac to start up w/ correct drive" with the "option key" technique, all that stuff. And, it's none of my pci cards, OR my ram. Ram check IS disabled. I pulled out and switched around every component. Nothing works. I have to wait a good 90 seconds watching a black screen.
Ken Spencer replied on :

I have the same problem ! Beige G3 233,Rev A, and a View Sonic 17" monitor. I see the amber light on the monitor, and wait for something like 30 - 45 seconds for the green light to come on, on the monitor, then the Mac starts to boot.

I am using the same monitor on my WIN box, and the amber turns to green in 5 or 10 seconds. I have disabled the RAM check at startup. (Now that was a COOL trick...)

But I am still left with a dark screen for way too long...

ken To reply by eMail, remove the "ECM"

Doris replied on :

It's too bad I'm not the only one with the problem. The quirky thing about it is that it started doing this a couple months ago. It worked fine prior to that. And, all the, "tech" people have silly answers like, "zap the pram," like that has ever helped anything :-)

I did notice something weird, though.... I use an Applevision monitor. But when I bought a Viewsonic a week ago, hooked it up, my computer actually worked fine. I returned the Viewsonic, hooked up my Applevision, and it continued working great! I figured maybe there was a "loose pin" or something in my vid cable connection. However, starting 4 days ago, the problem returned. I've jiggled and wiggled everything I can, but I still get my 90 seconds of black screen.

Ken Spencer wrote:

I have the same problem ! Beige G3 233,Rev A, and a View Sonic 17" monitor. I see the amber light on the monitor, and wait for something like 30 - 45 seconds for the green light to come on, on the monitor, then the Mac starts to boot.

I am using the same monitor on my WIN box, and the amber turns to green in 5 or 10 seconds. I have disabled the RAM check at startup. (Now that was a COOL trick...)

But I am still left with a dark screen for way too long...

ken To reply by eMail, remove the "ECM"

Mr. Neutron replied on :

Doris wrote:

I just read yesterday's group of 4 posts regarding this. I have EXACTLY the same problem!!!

I saw a vaguely similar problem that was fixed by reinstalling the latest firmware update and reinstalling the hard disk driver.

Matthew Lybanon replied on :

I just encountered the same problem, on my beige G3 266 MHz Mac running 8.6. Over the weekend I installed more RAM and a USB PCI card (a card to add two USB ports). When I rebooted after making these changes I noticed exactly the behavior described: the amber light on the monitor goes on and stays on for what seems like forever while nothing seems to be happening.

Another thing I noticed is that I have 600 MB (yes, 0.6 gig) less space available on my HD. I assumed the extensions I downloaded from the Apple site to support the USB card work have something to do with it (though why would the system have to create all those files EVERY time it boots, rather than just the first time), because when I reboot with extensions off I get all the space back.

Can anyone enlighten me on any of this? I would appreciate it. I don't even know how to disable RAM check (and I don't know if I want to); I missed that discussion. Thanks for any help.