Pink and white/light green checkered pattern on my screen

[g3bates]

I own a 17" g5 imac and today I was just browsing on Firefox and all of a sudden the screen became checkered with thin pink and white lines. It is most noticeable on the menu bar and anything that is grey or white in color. It is not checkered on the blue background behind my desktop photo. I have an external monitor plugged in as well and the same thing is happening to that monitor.

I have a powerPC imac G5
OSX 10.5.8
1.5GB DDR RAM
ATI Radeon 9600

Here is a screen shot:
http://www.gavinbates.tv/Screen.jpg

Haven't reformatted it yet. Hope there is a better solution. Purchased it used about a year ago. No warranty.

[spinnerlys]

Have you taken that screenshot with the system built in keyboard shortcut or Grab?

Has a restart and update solved anything?

[g3bates]

I took it with the built in shortcut. Restarted, updated, still the same.

[spinnerlys]

If you can re-install your system and backup (clone maybe) all your data, give it a try, but this looks more like a fried graphics card.

[g3bates]

Tried re-installing snow leopard and tiger. Still messed up. You can't just replace the graphics card on these right?

[spinnerlys]

Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6) is not made for PPC Macs, It only runs on x86 (Intel) Macs.

It does not seem possible to replace on the first brief search.
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=imac+g5+replace+graphic+card&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&redir_esc=&ei=_7meS97aO4Se_ga97cT7CQ

Maybe MRoogle gives you better results.

[rdowns]

That looks like a classic dead graphics card issue. You can not replace one on the iMac.

[g3bates]

Snow leopard ran fines for months. Used final cut studio and everything. I would have to replace the motherboard on this to correct the problem right?

[spinnerlys]

Snow leopard ran fines for months. Used final cut studio and everything. I would have to replace the motherboard on this to correct the problem right?

Yes.

Btw, Snow Leopard is Mac OS X 10.6.x and not PPC compatible.
Mac OS X 10.5.x is called Leopard.

[g3bates]

Here's a new twist. The checkered pattern are only affecting the desktop picture and nothing else now. DVD's look fine and so do program and folder windows. I called an Apple tech center and they said it may fit under the recall and could be fixed for free if the capacitor is bad.

And I can assure you I was running 10.6. I only have 10.4 and 10.6. Never had 10.5.

[MacBoobsPro]

Here's a new twist. The checkered pattern are only affecting the desktop picture and nothing else now. DVD's look fine and so do program and folder windows. I called an Apple tech center and they said it may fit under the recall and could be fixed for free if the capacitor is bad.

And I can assure you I was running 10.6. I only have 10.4 and 10.6. Never had 10.5.

Why does it say 10.5.8 in your original post?

That to me looks like a graphics card problem. I've had it twice and it can affect only certain parts of the screen depending on how things are rendered.

[g3bates]

Yes, I am wrong. I had Leopard, but I wiped it clean, put Tiger on, and I woke up this morning to a computer that is not showing any signs of the problem. It can't be from just putting Tiger on because I did it the day of the original post.

[MacBoobsPro]

Yes, I am wrong. I had Leopard, but I wiped it clean, put Tiger on, and I woke up this morning to a computer that is not showing any signs of the problem. It can't be from just putting Tiger on because I did it the day of the original post.

Mine used to do that too. One day you couldnt see a thing on screen the next day it was fine. It was a faulty graphics card.