Blue and white G3 problems...please help

I resently got a Blue and White G3. It was working OK but it seems to have developed some problems.

I got the thing and it booted up just fine. I got it from a PC guy who was basically just messing around with the thing. He had OS 9 and OS X installed on the same partition adn it was all screwed up so i decided to whipe the HD and reinstall stuff. I first messed with it a little bit by installing some ram and everything worked fine. I then started the reinstall by booting from a 9.2.1 CD i had and wiped the HD. Come to find out that the ROM was not updated so it would not work. Being a little mad I tried to jsut copy the OS 9 system folder to the HD. As soon as I did it i kew it would not work...so yeah. So i had to find a System 8.5 or somewhere around there. I FINALLY found one barried in my stack. I did not have time that night so i sprayed the inside out with a can of air, turn the computer of (cause the thing is loud), and basically left it sit for the night.

After that shut down is when the weirdness started.

I went to start it up the next day and for some reason it would not start. Here is what happens when i try to start it:
If i press the power button on the keyboard the power button on the front blinks green like it tries to turn on...but the computer won't. All the little LED's inside blink once and the fan turns a VERY small amount. After the press it just sits there and does nothing.
If I press the power button on the front of the machine it does that same thing.

I am starting to think it is a power supply problem (hoping it is actually). I don't think i static discharged on the inside of the case but i guess anything is possible. The only other thing i can think of is the fan was spinning around pretty good when i was spraying the can of air in the computer. I have never had a can of air cause a problem but again anything is possible. The only other thing i noticed was that the little red switch was in the up position when i first got it. Did not notice this right away but I put it in the correct position and from the reading i did that mistake should not have caused any huge problem.

Now the computer is really picky about starting up. I would say about 90%-95% of the time I can't get it to boot, but once in a blue moon it will.

If anyone has some helpful input it would be GREATLY appreciated!!

Thanks

dusanv said:

Mine did that only once. Freaked the hell out of me. I also though it was the power supply. Make sure all the cables/cards/memory are plugged in tightly. I never figured out what exactly caused the problem but something got unhooked. You can also try taking cards/memory out in case one of them died.

Click to expand...

Yup, The next thing i do will be unhooking and then reseating everything I can think of. Maybe i dislodged something when i was inside

CanadaRAM said:

Before panicking: Replace the PRAM battery.

Click to expand...

Yup, will be doing this as soon as the batteries come. I could have just went down to radio shack and got some but with about 6 other computers i figured going the ebay way was cheaper. The only bad part is waiting for the darn things to show up.

Edit: First time getting to use mulity quote. Very cool!!

just an update...

It was indeed the PRAM battery. I guess the thing that was freaking me out was the fact that I had never had one completely die on me. They had gotten to the point were they were low but the computer would still boot. This one seems to have jsut died completely adn then the computer would not boot up.

It seems to be fixed now. Thanks for the help.