G4 keeps complaing that "the case is open"!

'ello all,

I have what is, quite possibly, the most odd problem of all Mac-time: Everytime I try to put my Mac G4(sawtooth) machine to sleep in OS 9 I get:

"Your computer cannot be put into sleep until the case is closed. Please close the case and try again."

As you may have guessed, of course the case is closed. Here's the weird part: It sleeps in OSX, but not in 9.2.2. I've tried taking everything off, except for the mouse, still no luck. I've booted into a different partition that also has OS 9.2.2(just bare, nothing else{I use it for my "Classic" mode}) and it still does it there. I've even opened the case and tried to put it to sleep, just to see if that did anything...but it didn't. I even tried resetting the PMU, but still, nothing. :(

I've searched the net, and found nothing on this. I have a buddy who works at Apple, their database doesn't even have anything on this.

I've opened the case, looked for any sensors or something that may be blocked, and allow the G4 to think the case is open, couldn't see anything.

If anyone has any suggestions, or stuff to try, I'd be so very grateful...(I hate having to turn the Mac off every night rather than put it to sleep)

Thanks in advance,

Bel

In article cd5c022a.0411012123.3bfcf5d0@redacted.invalid, Belpowerslave@redacted.invalid (BelPowerSlave) wrote:

'ello all,

I have what is, quite possibly, the most odd problem of all Mac-time: Everytime I try to put my Mac G4(sawtooth) machine to sleep in OS 9 I get:

"Your computer cannot be put into sleep until the case is closed. Please close the case and try again."

I've searched the net, and found nothing on this. I have a buddy who works at Apple, their database doesn't even have anything on this.

I've opened the case, looked for any sensors or something that may be blocked, and allow the G4 to think the case is open, couldn't see anything.

If anyone has any suggestions, or stuff to try, I'd be so very grateful...(I hate having to turn the Mac off every night rather than put it to sleep)

Thanks in advance,

Bel

Seems like the G4s had a LED which lite up (at least my G4 450 did) when the case was open inside on the motherboard. There must be a sensor, either mechanical switch or a mercury switch to sense case open. I doubt they'd put a mercury switch (old gravity mercury filled tube sensing position) in current machines considering environmental issues.

If your case closes smoothly with no seam gaps, look for a mechanical micro switch somewhere.

Good luck. Certainly a weird problem.

Morenuf

In article cd5c022a.0411012123.3bfcf5d0@redacted.invalid, Belpowerslave@redacted.invalid (BelPowerSlave) writes:

I have what is, quite possibly, the most odd problem of all Mac-time: Everytime I try to put my Mac G4(sawtooth) machine to sleep in OS 9 I get:

"Your computer cannot be put into sleep until the case is closed. Please close the case and try again."

As you may have guessed, of course the case is closed. Here's the weird part: It sleeps in OSX, but not in 9.2.2. I've tried taking everything off, except for the mouse, still no luck. I've booted into a different partition that also has OS 9.2.2(just bare, nothing else{I use it for my "Classic" mode}) and it still does it there. I've even opened the case and tried to put it to sleep, just to see if that did anything...but it didn't. I even tried resetting the PMU, but still, nothing. :(

I've searched the net, and found nothing on this. I have a buddy who works at Apple, their database doesn't even have anything on this.

I've opened the case, looked for any sensors or something that may be blocked, and allow the G4 to think the case is open, couldn't see anything.

Did you reset PRAM?

Regards, Christoph Gartmann

Seems like the G4s had a LED which lite up (at least my G4 450 did) when the case was open inside on the motherboard. There must be a sensor, either mechanical switch or a mercury switch to sense case open. I doubt they'd put a mercury switch (old gravity mercury filled tube sensing position) in current machines considering environmental issues.

If your case closes smoothly with no seam gaps, look for a mechanical micro switch somewhere.

Good luck. Certainly a weird problem.

Morenuf

You're right, it does have a small, red light that comes on when you open the case. I never noticed that before(I tried opening it tonight, with the lights dimmed and immediately noticed. When I close the machine, the light is still on, this is not supposed to be so, right, it's supposed to turn off when the machine is closed?

I will go over the case again, see what I can do to try to get the light to turn off, then try to put the machine to sleep once it does go off. V

Very interesting suggestion, I am very excited that this could be it, we could be close to fixing this issue! Man, that'd be soooo great! Will give it a shot tonight, let you know tomorrow. :)

Thanks again,

Bel

I've opened the case, looked for any sensors or something that may be blocked, and allow the G4 to think the case is open, couldn't see anything.

Did you reset PRAM?

Regards, Christoph Gartmann

Yeah, I have, my bad, I meant to put that in there with the info about resetting the PMU, etc.

Bel

Ok, I just looked over it again, and I just can't find anything in terms of a switch, sensor or any item that would make the machine realize it's open. :(

In my quest to fix this issue, I ran across this:

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t58785.html

I tried emailing the guy, to see if he ever got it fixed, but never got an answer. :(

The only other thing I've found about this issue, was in the form of a link that someone suggested I look into:

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/systems/ATX_G4_AGP_conversion/G4_AGP_to_ATX_case_pg3.htm

I am assuming they were talking about this bit of text:

"" On Gigabit G4 and higher, pin 6 is the throbber, 7 is ground, and 9 is 5v. As for sleep, pin 2, my experience is that if this is not connected to ground, the machine will not go to sleep... I have no idea why this is."

I never got a response asking if this was what they were talking about, but I am guessing it is(even though it's not my model of G4).

At any rate, you now have all the info I've been able to scrape up over the entire net so far. Even my buddy who works at Apple, using their private database, says he's found nothing on this issue.

Argh, so frustrating...but I appreciate everyone's help so far, and if ya'll have any other suggestions, feel free to mention them. :)

Thanks again,

Bel

In article cd5c022a.0411021803.73548a7e@redacted.invalid, Belpowerslave@redacted.invalid (BelPowerSlave) wrote:

Seems like the G4s had a LED which lite up (at least my G4 450 did) when the case was open inside on the motherboard. There must be a sensor, either mechanical switch or a mercury switch to sense case open. I doubt they'd put a mercury switch (old gravity mercury filled tube sensing position) in current machines considering environmental issues.

If your case closes smoothly with no seam gaps, look for a mechanical micro switch somewhere.

Good luck. Certainly a weird problem.

Morenuf

You're right, it does have a small, red light that comes on when you open the case. I never noticed that before(I tried opening it tonight, with the lights dimmed and immediately noticed. When I close the machine, the light is still on, this is not supposed to be so, right, it's supposed to turn off when the machine is closed?

I will go over the case again, see what I can do to try to get the light to turn off, then try to put the machine to sleep once it does go off. V

Very interesting suggestion, I am very excited that this could be it, we could be close to fixing this issue! Man, that'd be soooo great! Will give it a shot tonight, let you know tomorrow. :)

Thanks again,

Bel You tickled my memory of this LED. I opened my powered up G4 450 and sure enough the very visible RED LED was glowing bright right there next to the DIMM memory slots.

My memory (organic between the ears) was the LED was on when case was open. It is, but it did not seem to go off when I closed the case, at least it was still visibly on before the last crack of the case seam closed.

Puzzled, I found no micro switch either.

More puzzled, I tried to remember where I'd read about the RED LED. I think I found it in the G4 450 take apart/trouble shooting manual. ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ This the exact quote from the G4 450 manual pdf file: Logic Board LEDS Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics) There is one RED LED on the Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics) logic board. It indicates there is power to the board and does not imply a fault condition. Hardware such as DIMMS and PCI cards should not be installed or removed when LED is on. ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ So, I think I accidentally gave you a red (pun intended) herring by mistake. Blame my bad organic memory (lost too many neurons over the years). Best I can tell, that RED LED did not go out as the case closed on my G4 450 AGP Mac. It must be on any time power is on to the motherboard.

Sorry about that. The hunt will continue for you unfortunately.

Morenuf

morenuf morenuf@redacted.invalid wrote:

My memory (organic between the ears) was the LED was on when case was open. It is, but it did not seem to go off when I closed the case, at least it was still visibly on before the last crack of the case seam closed.

Puzzled, I found no micro switch either.

The LED is illuminated whenever the G4 is on. Its function is to warn against pulling or plugging in components while the Mac is in deep sleep.

AFAIK, no Mac ever had a case switch. The G4 towers don't. Needless to say, I have no explanation for alert message reported by the OP.

Very interesting suggestion, I am very excited that this could be it, we could be close to fixing this issue! Man, that'd be soooo great! Will give it a shot tonight, let you know tomorrow. :)

Thanks again,

Bel You tickled my memory of this LED. I opened my powered up G4 450 and sure enough the very visible RED LED was glowing bright right there next to the DIMM memory slots.

My memory (organic between the ears) was the LED was on when case was open. It is, but it did not seem to go off when I closed the case, at least it was still visibly on before the last crack of the case seam closed.

Puzzled, I found no micro switch either.

More puzzled, I tried to remember where I'd read about the RED LED. I think I found it in the G4 450 take apart/trouble shooting manual. ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ This the exact quote from the G4 450 manual pdf file: Logic Board LEDS Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics) There is one RED LED on the Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics) logic board. It indicates there is power to the board and does not imply a fault condition. Hardware such as DIMMS and PCI cards should not be installed or removed when LED is on. ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄ So, I think I accidentally gave you a red (pun intended) herring by mistake. Blame my bad organic memory (lost too many neurons over the years). Best I can tell, that RED LED did not go out as the case closed on my G4 450 AGP Mac. It must be on any time power is on to the motherboard.

Sorry about that. The hunt will continue for you unfortunately.

Morenuf

morenuf@redacted.invalid

No problem. Yeah, I noticed that the red light always seemed to be on(if you turn the lights out in the room, you can see a slight red light through the handle that opens the case).

In my sifting around last night, I found something very interesting though: Do you still happen to have your Sawtooth machine? If so, take a look at this and let me know what you think:

Once you open the machine, the piece that swings out(that has the motherboard and such), right on the top of that one corner that's right above the FireWire inputs, there are two prongs. Interestingly enough, they go down into the machine a little bit. I'm thinking that maybe these could have something to do with the Mac knowing the case is open. If you get a chance, look at your G4 and see if you can find them as well... :)

Thanks,

Whip Ass Gaming: http://www.whipassgaming.com/ or http://users2.ev1.net/~belpowerslave/

"...we traveled together...east, always into the east."

• Marius, Diablo II

My memory (organic between the ears) was the LED was on when case was open. It is, but it did not seem to go off when I closed the case, at least it was still visibly on before the last crack of the case seam closed.

Puzzled, I found no micro switch either.

The LED is illuminated whenever the G4 is on. Its function is to warn against pulling or plugging in components while the Mac is in deep sleep.

AFAIK, no Mac ever had a case switch. The G4 towers don't. Needless to say, I have no explanation for alert message reported by the OP.

Yeah, it's just so odd...the fact that it'll sleep in OSX makes things even weirder. :(

One other thing that I forgot to mention that I did, I even went so far as to take out the HD that's in there, put in a small 6 gigger, did a fresh install of OS 9 and it still wouldn't sleep. At first, when I got this Mac it had one of those "adaptec" SCSI controller cards in it that, along my searching, I found was making it so that any Mac housing one couldn't sleep in 10.1. I thought this could be the cause, and just to try it out, and know I didn't have any Adaptec drivers and such, I did a fresh install on that one HD, without the card in there.

The G4 had a lot of weird stuff in it when it was given to me: That Adaptec card, an 18 gig SCSI Seagate drive, 10 miles of ribbon and a gigabit ethernet card. Probably ebay all that crap...;)

Whip Ass Gaming: http://www.whipassgaming.com/ or http://users2.ev1.net/~belpowerslave/

"...we traveled together...east, always into the east."

• Marius, Diablo II

On Wed, 03 Nov 2004 10:34:22 -0600, BelPowerslave (belpowerslave@redacted.invalid) wrote:

Yeah, it's just so odd...the fact that it'll sleep in OSX makes things even weirder. :(

What's the source of your OS9 installation? Did it come from a Powerbook perchance?

I vaguely recollect something similar when I copied a System Folder from my Pismo to my G4.

"Bev A. Kupf" wrote:

On Wed, 03 Nov 2004 10:34:22 -0600, BelPowerslave (belpowerslave@redacted.invalid) wrote:

Yeah, it's just so odd...the fact that it'll sleep in OSX makes things even weirder. :(

What's the source of your OS9 installation? Did it come from a Powerbook perchance?

I vaguely recollect something similar when I copied a System Folder from my Pismo to my G4.

-- Beverly A. Kupf

It's a retail OS 9.2.1 disc.

Whip Ass Gaming: http://www.whipassgaming.com/ or http://users2.ev1.net/~belpowerslave/

"Suddenly aware of my presence, the Elder Gods transformed me into their servant and gave me a new purpose: To prevent the Dragon King from merging the realms."

• Scorpion, Mortal Kombat: Deception

hello -

now, i'm mostly a PC tech (sorry - just the way things worked out), but I've been super into MACS lately, (and actually own more macs than PCs these days)... here are my random thoughts...

perhaps there is NO physical switch per-say. A lot of times, what manufacturers will do, is attach a "hidden" sensor which connects to the metal chasis of the case.

When the case is open the circuit is "broken" signifying to the computer that the case is - well - open.

When the case is closed, the metal from the case completes the circuit and acts as "closed"...

I honestly have no idea if this is something that Apple may have done, but it may be and here's perhaps why I think this may be a step in the right direction...

it might be feasible that apple changed their coding in OS X to "ignore" this, and that OS 9.x will not ignore it, which is the only reason I can think that it may work in OS x and not 9....

just some thoughts :-) maybe it might help a little?

• posted via http://mymac.ws

Just for the benefit of anyone else who may run into this problem, and can benefit from the knowledge we've come up with on it, I thought I'd post this here so Google could archive it for all time... :)

First off, the post that helped me fix the issue:

http://www.macworld.com/forums/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB3&Number=269123&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

Now, in case that dies at any point, here's the deal:

What makes the G4(AGP Graphics and higher models) believe the case really is closed is a small magnet attached to the PCI Extension supporters on the top, lefthand side of the case. This magnet lines up with some odd piece of plastic(with a metal strip embedded in it) that is located on the inside portion of the metal shield around the Power button. What happened with mine, and I have two theories on this: 1. The adhesive that holds the magnet in place must get pretty gooey after the Mac's been on, running hot for quite some time...and maybe it slides around, out of range to be detected by. 2. The magnet just looses it's magnetic charge after time...maybe becomes weaker.

At any rate, what I did to fix was first, I actually peeled the magnet off, put it sticky side down on the odd piece of plastic, that didn't work. Next, I put it metal side down on the odd piece of plastic, that did work. Not content with just leaving it there, I took the magnet and stuck it as far off the edge of the PCI Extension supporter as possible, while still being able to close the case. This brought it in range, and allowed the Mac to finally believe that the case was, in fact, really closed. :)

Wow...that is the most weird Mac issue I've ever come across. It's odd, even Apple themselves had nothing in their database about this issue...but that's ok, now Google does... :)

Bel

In article cd5c022a.0411190757.5d587bfa@redacted.invalid, Belpowerslave@redacted.invalid (BelPowerSlave) wrote:

First off, the post that helped me fix the issue:

http://www.macworld.com/forums/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=UBB3&Number= 269123&page=0&view=collapsed&sb=5&o=&fpart=1

Now, in case that dies at any point, here's the deal:

What makes the G4(AGP Graphics and higher models) believe the case really is closed is a small magnet attached to the PCI Extension supporters on the top, lefthand side of the case. This magnet lines up with some odd piece of plastic(with a metal strip embedded in it) that is located on the inside portion of the metal shield around the Power button.

Bel Glad you finally tracked it down. I looked all over my G4 450 when you first had the problem & reported it here and I could not find anything indicating case was closed.

I was the one who thought in error the RED LED inside on the motherboard indicated case was open. LED only means motherboard power is live and G4 is on.

Good detective work. Morenuf

What makes the G4(AGP Graphics and higher models) believe the case really is closed is a small magnet attached to the PCI Extension supporters on the top, lefthand side of the case. This magnet lines up with some odd piece of plastic(with a metal strip embedded in it) that is located on the inside portion of the metal shield around the Power button.

Bel Glad you finally tracked it down. I looked all over my G4 450 when you first had the problem & reported it here and I could not find anything indicating case was closed.

I was the one who thought in error the RED LED inside on the motherboard indicated case was open. LED only means motherboard power is live and G4 is on.

Good detective work. Morenuf

Thanks man. I appreciate your input, it's all a learning experience, you know? :)

I couldn't have fixed it without Surfnut's help(check that MacWorld forum post), so together...collectively, everyone who had input on the issue is to be thanked(including yourself). The Red LED tip(about the machine being on) is a great tip...and could potentially help someone from killing their Mac while doing something with it and not realizing it's asleep or something. :)

At any rate, I'm just glad my G4 can finally get some sleep... ;)

Whip Ass Gaming: http://www.whipassgaming.com/

"...we traveled together...east, always into the east."

• Marius, Diablo II

BelPowerSlave Belpowerslave@redacted.invalid wrote:

What makes the G4(AGP Graphics and higher models) believe the case really is closed is a small magnet attached to the PCI Extension supporters on the top, lefthand side of the case.

Not all AGP G4s have such a switch. My Gigabit Ethernet (the next model after the Sawtooth) doesn't. I suspect that the Sawtooth was the only model to have this switch. That would explain why OS X ignores it and why your buddy at Apple didn't know about it.

Neill Massello wrote:

BelPowerSlave Belpowerslave@redacted.invalid wrote:

What makes the G4(AGP Graphics and higher models) believe the case really is closed is a small magnet attached to the PCI Extension supporters on the top, lefthand side of the case.

Not all AGP G4s have such a switch. My Gigabit Ethernet (the next model after the Sawtooth) doesn't. I suspect that the Sawtooth was the only model to have this switch.

Hmmmmml, interesting, I was lead to believe that all G4's had that...but it's good to know that they all don't. I wonder if the model below(the G4 PCI Graphics model) has it as well...

That would explain why OS X ignores it and why your buddy at Apple didn't know about it.

Well, I agree with you both points...but it's a defect, or definitely something that can be a defect, it's something Apple themselves should not only know about it, but try to get some support published on it. Then again, if you're not using OSX...Apple could really care less about you... :(

Bel