Brief update to my ongoing PowerBook saga: it turns out Apple’s repair technicians really did need information from me; the woman who told me their request was an error, was herself in error. It only took five days, four phone calls to AppleCare and two trips to the Apple Store to figure this out. :|
Anyway, apparently the information they needed from me was, “Uh, what did you want us to fix again? Your computer’s working fine!” Yeah, it seems my dead laptop magically resurrected itself en route to the repair center, and is now booting up without any difficulty (whereas before, neither I nor the Skeet Ulrich lookalike at the Genius Bar could get it to start up at all). So I guess the “POP!” sound must not have been the motherboard? Or the fried circuits somehow re-aligned themselves and started working again? Or a temporal anomaly in the Devron System has created a collision between time and anti-time, causing time to run backwards and thus fixing my computer? (Sorry, I just watched the Star Trek: TNG series finale on TiVo…)
Anyway, I have a question for our resident techno-geeks. According to the latest person I spoke with at the repair dispatch center, the most recent notation in my file states, “Unit powers on fine and loop AMT.” He didn’t know what “loop AMT” means, and neither do I, so I’m just wondering if anyone here does?
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Categories: PowerBook Problems, Technology & Nerdy News
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June 19th, 2007 at 2:56:20 pm
I might be wrong but isn’t a loop just a set of commands that are fired off when the computer starts up…i think it repeats the commands a bunch of times to make sure they work correctly.
I’m probably wrong though.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:12:44 pm
Well, one definition of AMT is an address mapping table. There are different kinds of address mapping tables, but a loop in an address mapping table would basically cause a computer on start up to keep referring to the same entry. I think the most common AMTs are associations with hardware (physical addresses) and host addresses. Did you add a new piece of hardware recently? Not sure, though, how a Mac would manage to get into a startup loop. They’re pretty robust. So this is probably not what they mean by Loop AMT.
June 19th, 2007 at 3:33:46 pm
For a second there, I thought you meant your machine was starting to continually spit out cash…
Then, I realized it wasn’t an ATM, and somewhat changed my position on Apple quality.
June 19th, 2007 at 4:10:59 pm
And you thought “Infinite Loop” was just Apple’s address.
June 19th, 2007 at 4:15:09 pm
That was Jarrett’s play two years ago on 4 and forever versus the Irish that Lehnert threaded the thin thin needle. ugh
June 19th, 2007 at 4:30:34 pm
Star Trek: TNG
Nice.
June 19th, 2007 at 5:32:42 pm
Ahh out in the Devon system again … ahh those were the days when Picard had a beard, Beverly had a ship, Georgi had a wife and Data looked like a skunk with that streak of white in his hair
What a great series finale. certainly beat out the crappy Enterprise finale.
June 19th, 2007 at 5:54:44 pm
I have no idea what Loop AMT means, but it sure sounds alot like other techno jargon like NTF/NFF(no trouble found/no fault found), which is usually worse than finding a verfiable problem….typically it means your doomed to intermittent occurences of the problem for no apparent reason. Push Apple to replace your lappy.
June 19th, 2007 at 10:14:12 pm
It just hit me what’s wrong with your computer… Your power supply is no more. It’s got to be, it is the only logical reason why it would work in Cupertino but not in Tennessee.
June 19th, 2007 at 10:39:03 pm
Nope. We tried it with a different power supply at the Apple Store, and it was still dead. Besides, all of our power supplies are working fine with our other laptops.
June 19th, 2007 at 10:41:23 pm
P.S. Also, in order for your theory to be correct, the battery and the power supply would have both needed to crap out simultaneously.
June 20th, 2007 at 12:24:24 am
oh… perhaps they use different electrons there… or perhaps they some how mixed up your computer with someone else’s… or someone fixed it and forgot to not the fix (that seems really unlikely)… I dunno, I got nothing, it’s like the car that works when you take it to the mechanic…
June 20th, 2007 at 12:32:38 am
P.S. Also, in order for your theory to be correct, the battery and the power supply would have both needed to crap out simultaneously
Incorrect, as a common part of the power system could fail that would prevent both from working :) I still think the “POP” you heard was a bad bad thing and while it may be ok now, i can’t imagine it will be so for long. I suggest frequent backups and make sure you get it to fail before the warranty is up ;-)
June 20th, 2007 at 2:20:23 am
a common part of the power system could fail that would prevent both from working
Yes, but that wouldn’t explain why it works in Cupertino (actually I believe it’s in either Houston or Memphis) when it didn’t work in Knoxville, which was the whole point of Dane’s theory. :)
Anyway, I agree that the “pop” is bad, and I think the Apple techs are baffled too — that’s why they haven’t returned it yet, they’ve been trying different things to reproduce the problem. Anyway, my warranty goes until December 31, 2008, so I’ve got some time yet. :)
June 20th, 2007 at 2:24:31 am
someone fixed it and forgot to not the fix (that seems really unlikely)
I dunno - my insurance company processed two claims and sent out information about both to the providers, but then forgot to note that they’d done so, leading to a protracted fight between me and a manager regarding a deadline that I supposedly missed, but really didn’t, because I sent them the damn claims in April, and not only did they receive them, they acted on them - however he has insisted that because nothing is in their system regarding the claims, therefore nothing could possibly have occurred, because the system is infalliable - luckily I was finally able to obtain from one of my providers a copy of a fax sent by the insurance company to them on May 2 (three weeks before the insurance company’s system shows they had any knowledge whatsoever of my claim), so I have a “smoking gun”…
Anyway, the point is, anything is possible. :) But yeah, unlikely.
As for the other possibility you mentioned, let’s just say I will definitely be double-checking the serial number of my computer when I get it back.
June 20th, 2007 at 1:41:55 pm
http://www.cisco.com/univercd/cc/td/doc/cisintwk/ito_doc/applet.htm#wp1020707
June 20th, 2007 at 8:59:45 pm
Anon @ 1:41 - from the cited source …
“The next time an AppleTalk protocol wants to communicate with that node, another AARP request must be transmitted to discover the hardware address.” {my emphasis}
Talk about OLD architecture !
(grin)