My Power Mac is beeping...

Memory error I think.

Just to confirm, it's not the power supply noise (which is usually more of a scratching sound, and it's not generally that regular--mostly happens when the processors are under changing load) or the hard drives, right? (Some drives, particuarly certain Hitachi/IBM ones, sound a little like a beep on access, and some Hitachi drives do this funnly little "vrrrip" sound periodically to avoid heat dissipation or some such).

Providing it's neither of those, it's probably some sort of hardware error. Oh, and is the red light behind the power button (inside the case--you can probably see it through the grille) on? I believe that's some sort of hardware error light.

Might want to run the hardware test disc to see what comes up.

mraila said:

I recently set up my new dual 2gHz Power Mac (it's a dual processor model, not a dual core model)

When I woke it up this evening I noticed a very soft beep coming from the tower! Weird! It beeps about once every second.

Anybody know what this is??

It's not coming from the speaker - I still heard it when the speaker was muted.

Click to expand...

I have a similar problem and I think it is well know problem. Temporarily, I could fix it by setting the energy saving option to automatic or reduced (there is still beeping but alot quieter).

Ok, sounds to me like you're hearing a form of the power supply "chirp", which is normal, although I've never heard of it being that regular (the power supply is along the bottom, so you'd hear it from down there). There's a very easy way to test:

Open up the "Energy Saver" System Pref, and set "Processor Performance" to "Highest" and close the window. If it stops, then that's what it was, and it's normal for the G5. If it doesn't stop, it's something else--perhaps a noisy fan up front, in which case maybe you need a new one.

It beeps because the Power Mac G5 comes with a piece of junk power supply that makes noises.

Setting the processor performance to highest will just make it worse. The only way to make it stop is to disable nap using the processor preference pane that comes with CHUD Tools, but that's not an ideal solution.

Nothing works properly on Macs.

ToastyX said:

Setting the processor performance to highest will just make it worse. The only way to make it stop is to disable nap using the processor preference pane that comes with CHUD Tools, but that's not an ideal solution.

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Really? Everybody always talks about the nap disable solution, but in my case Highest quiets it down completely. It's really nowhere near loud enough to care, personally, so I *don't* do that, but it's odd that that works for me but not others.

I'll beg to differ about the "nothing works" comment. Several Dells I've set up recently make at least that much odd noise, including laptops, and they often have drastically louder fans as well that somewhat masks the noise (in a bad way).