dirt slow Ti 550

[Hector Luna]

I'd like to apologize for the length of this post, but I've been at it for a
couple of days and have already tried a lot. I thought it best to be as
detailed as I could...

My PowerBook had been running like a champ since I bought it last April.
Shortly after I got it I upped the ram to 768MB and replaced the 20GB HD
with a 40GB. I put the 20GB HD in a bus powered FireWire enclosure.

When I put Jaguar on it, for reasons unrelated to performance, I opted to
completely wipe the HD and start fresh. It's my daily use system and I've
been using it for work and play, with no problems.

Last week I got an iPod and shortly thereafter I began the process of
encoding my CDs with iTunes to transfer them to the iPod. At some point I
tried to connect my bus powered FireWire HD to my PowerBook. iTunes was in
the middle of encoding a disc (the CPU monitor was pegged at a 100%) and the
FireWire HD didn't mount. In the past when that happened, I unplugged the
FireWire cable from either the PowerBook or the enclosure and it would then
mount. This was the first time I'd tried it with iTunes running.

This is where things when bad. When I plugged the enclosure back in, iTunes
stopped encoding, it was still running, but the progress bar had stopped. I
unplugged the HD enclosure and attempted to quit iTunes, but it didn't
respond. That was when I noticed that the whole computer was not responding.
It turned out to be an extremely slow response, somewhere on the order of 20
to 30 seconds slow. I tried force quitting iTunes and it took several
attempts to get it to quit, 3 or 4 attempts to be exact, over a 3 minute
time period. I then tried to get the computer to reboot and it then stopped
responding altogether. I left the room for about 5 minutes and when I
returned it hadn't progressed any further. I did a force shut down (holding
the power button for 10 seconds) then I tried to reboot.

It took 15 seconds for the screen to light up after the chime. I don't
remember it taking that long before. Then it never actually booted up the
OS. The spinning wheel sat there for what seemed like forever, at least 5
minutes, and never booted. I tried to zap the pram, but I couldn't seem to
pull it off and gave up on that after a few attempts.

I tried to mount it in target mode w/ my wife's iBook, but it would never
come up. I couldn't even get the Jaguar disk to boot the computer. For
reasons I can't explain, it didn't occur to me to try to boot into OS 9.

I finaly got the computer to boot when I pulled the 40GB HD and put in the
20GB I had in the enclosure. I had already migrated my backup data from it
to the iBook. I wiped the drive and put Jaguar on it, opting not to load any
of the extras, just the BSD subsystem and the additional apps. After the
first disk was done it rebooted and asked for the second disk. I put the
second disk in and after the progress bar failed to move after 15 minutes I
canceled the install, thinking I'd install them myself later.

I was finally back on the PowerBook in OS X but it was dirt slow, and the
CPU monitor was pegged to 100% all the time. I opened a terminal window and
ran top. The User CPU usage never topped 30%, the bulk of usage was
attributed to the System. I then loaded the additional apps, and it seemed
to be a little better, but not really. I upped it to 10.2.3, but again, it
didn't seem to make any improvement, it was still dirt slow and the CPU
monitor was still always at 100%.

I booted off the OS 9 disc to install it and I put it on the same partition
(as I had before). It was a lot faster in 9. I don't know that it was at
full speed because I never really booted into OS 9 before and couldn't
really make an accurate comparison. I have a Blue & White 400 running OS 9
and the Ti 550 was about as fast.

I neglected to uncheck the option to upgrade the drivers for the hard drive
for the OS 9 install and when I rebooted into X it seemed that any speed
gain I might have made was gone. I booted of the hardware test disc that
came with the Ti 550 and ran the long and short tests and both said
everthing was OK.

I don't know why the CPU is always at 100%. That is really bugging me. I
launched the process monitor and couldn't tell from that. The percentages
displayed never amounted to 100%, just like it had in Top. In Top, the
percentages added up to the amount displayed for User usage. When I launch
the CPU monitor the icon bounces 20 times in the dock. That used to be 2 or
3 bounces at most. Same for the terminal. And when the terminal window
opens, it is another full 15 seconds before I get the prompt. When it boots
up in X, the little wheel spins under the Gray Apple for 3 to 4 minutes
before I get the "Welcome to OS X" screen.

As I write this I am re-installing Jaguar. This time I am not going to
customize the install and will let the second disk install without
interruption. If that doesn't seem to help I'll probably go back to the
original 10.1 disc that came with the PowerBook and start over. I'm pretty
sure that the data on the 40GB HD is trashed beyond recovery, that's OK.
Right now I've got the original drive it came with in it and once I get that
going I'll worry about the 40GB HD.

This is going on day 3 and I'm at wits end. I'm almost ready to take it in
to Apple. Does anyone have any ideas on what might be going on? Or how I
might find out what is using up ALL of my CPU? If it was slow in OS 9 that
might indicate a hardware error, but it really is pretty snappy in 9.

Thanks for letting me rant,
-Hector

-- 
Polonius19
Chief Malcontent & Misanthrope
Urban Pacification League