Is my iMac G4 toast?

So a few months ago I fired up my iMac and a bunch of computer gibberish appeared in bands on the top of the screen. I rebooted and it just didn't start up. Fans were on but nothing else.

Anyway, went on vacation, came back and today decided to see whats up. Fired it up and got the familiar chime and Apple logo pops up. ALL IS FINE! YAY!.... or not, then this comes up. I turned it off, then tried to fire it back up and fans spin but nothing happens.

?

Intell said:

That may be a hardware problem. I'd first suggest reinstalling Mac OS X. If that doesn't fix it, the GPU may be fried.

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I'll give it a go and reinstall. I thought it might be a thermal issue but it is only on for a few seconds before it craps out so I doubt it has time to get hot enough to cut out.


edit: So I replaced the thermal paste and dusted out the inside, made there everything was okay inside. No boot. Tried booting into Open Firmware (cmd+option+o+f) and it worked! So maybe hard drive is toast? Which sucks even more as those damn IDE drives are expensive.

edit2: annnnnnnd nm. It froze up again and won't reboot.

havokalien said:

Capacitors, check power supply inside and on motherboard for capacitors. Due to age and use it's about time for the G4's to fall victim to the problem that the vintage Mac community is experiencing.

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I'll rip it open again tomorrow and take a look. It might be going to the big recycling station in the sky, or a freebie on Craigslist.