iMac G3 no speakers

i use external speakers plugged into one of the headphone ports on mine. the built in speakers ain't nothing to write home about.

itsOver9000 said:

I picked up an indigo iMac G3 500MHz about a week ago with a known issue that the built-in speakers aren't working properly. So far I haven't had much luck getting the speakers working again. I can get sound to work through headphones when I plug headphones into either of the 2 headphone ports on the front. No sound when I plug into the audio output port on the side of the iMac.

The only thing available under sound output in Sys Prefs is "Headphones Port: Built-in Audio".

Audio under System Profiler lists this:
Built In Sound Card:
CODEC: Apple Screamer
Sample Rate: 44.1 KHz
Number of Inputs: 2
Number of Outputs: 2
Devices:
Input:
Type: Internal Microphone
Input:
Type: External Microphone
Output:
Type: External Speaker
Output:
Type: Internal Speaker

I guess that looks ok?

I've tried a few things I found while googling - new user account, PRAM reset, pushing the PMU reset button on the logic board. The other day I opened the iMac up and tried changing the board with the 2 front headphone ports on it with a different board I received with this iMac. A few sites I read on said that headphone board was the most likely cause of not getting sound to output from the speakers. The front headphone ports don't seem loose or anything.
The replacement headphone board didn't help though (assuming that board isn't bad). I still only got sound when plugging headphones into the front ports.

I'm wondering what else I can try at this point. Do I need to completely dismantle the iMac and check to see that the cables for the speakers or headphone board haven't somehow come loose from the logic board?

Hopefully someone knows an easier fix before I go through all that trouble..!!

Click to expand...

Does it bong at start-up? If it does you have an OS issue.

itsOver9000 said:

No, no startup chime from the speakers, just headphones if they're plugged in.

Click to expand...

Try plugging in headphones repeatedly with System Preferences open and determine if it ever changes. Sometimes dust buildup will cause this within the jacks.

This could be a number of things, both hardware, and software related.

The first thing that you should do, is to follow this flowchart:
Zap the PRAM (again) to clear any preferences.
Start from a system from a boot / install CD, and determine if sound works from this.

If not, then it is a hardware fault. This could be anything from a short to ground, to a problem with the mainboard.

Which iMac G3 model do you own?

Service Source Sound Diagnostics Flowchart for iMac 233/266/333MHz G3

Are you certain that you are using the CD-ROM version of Tiger, and not the DVD-ROm version?

The iMac 233/266MHz normally hasa CD-ROm drive, with no DVD capabilities, and if you are using a Tiger DVD, it won;t load for that reason.

You will probably want Leopard,or Jaguar for this system.

AmestrisXServe said:

You will probably want Leopard,or Jaguar for this system.

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G3's cannot run Leopard. The best OS X for the OP's machine would be Panther. But it's lack of modern software makes Tiger a better alternative to some.

Intell said:

G3's cannot run Leopard. The best OS X for the OP's machine would be Panther. But it's lack of modern software makes Tiger a better alternative to some.

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Sorry there, that's just an example of senility; oje of my mental slips.

I meant Jaguar (10.2) of course, which is also a spotted cat, and that is how I tend to remember the cats on the OS label (i.e. visually).

The box for 10.2 stands out in my mind, from its leopard-spotted X logo, and the name slipped a cog when was writing.

OSX 10.0 (Cheetah) and 10.1 (Puma) had that (identical) blue X, and Panther shipped in that classy jet-back box. After that, everything went downstream in term of package identity:

Tiger did not have a striped X on the box, and was in a black and silver package, and Leopard was in a purple and black box, of small, Japanese-inspired size. (Snow Leopeard returned to having a cat on it, keeping the small size.)

I wouldn't suggest anything earlier than 10.2, due to the Quartz/Quartz Extreme improvements in 10.2 over 10.1, that tend to make Aqua in 10.1 run terribly on low-end G3 systems.

I would think that Tiger is a poor choice for the original, and second waves of iMac systems, because of low memory, the slower-end G3s, small HDs, and integrated CD-ROM drives. While it is possible to upgrade the iMac 233-266Mhz systems to handle Tiger, the cost to bring it up to spec for smooth Tiger operations, is outweighed by how small the cost for buying an all-in-one that can easily run tiger would be.

You would want the CD Retail version of Tiger for an iMac in any event. I still have those CDs, if the OP has only the DVD version, and wants to try it.

For this system, I would suggest a hybrid boot, OS 9.1/9.2 and OSX 10.2, which would be a best-situations for an original, or candy coloured (a.k.a. Fruits) iMac. This refrains from running Classic inside OSX, clearing valuable RAM and CPU time, and allows the use of 'Classic' programmes, extensions, themes, and so forth, on a directly-loaded OS.

AmestrisXServe said:

...
I would think that Tiger is a poor choice for the original, and second waves of iMac systems, because of low memory, the slower-end G3s, small HDs, and integrated CD-ROM drives. While it is possible to upgrade the iMac 233-266Mhz systems to handle Tiger, the cost to bring it up to spec for smooth Tiger operations, is outweighed by how small the cost for buying an all-in-one that can easily run tiger would be.
...

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If you mean the 2000 fruit colour models, I ran my iMac G3 DV 400MHz (second round of fruits) with Tiger via external FW400 drive from time to time and it worked very well. I have 1GB or RAM, though.
Btw.: while I know, it is pointless using OS9 in classic mode on these machines, since they support it natively, I discovered, that OS 9 works better in classic under 10.2 (Apple Works and Master of Orion) than under 10.4 (on that same iMac) in the classic environment, it took much longer to load and was problematic. Any idea, why that is?
The funny thing is, that OS 9 in classic on my 1,33GHz ibook under 10.4 with Master of Orion as a test doesn't run as good as in OS 9 under 10.2 on the iMac as well.

I don't know the situation in the states, but for Germany on Ebay the SDRAM for the DV G3s is like 1EUR per 512MB, but big SO-Dimm for the original tray loaders is like 10,-EUR, here. Crazy. I agree, that getting a better spec-ed iMac would come on the same cost, but where would be the fun. How much would SDRAM and SO-Dimms cost on US Ebay?

itsOver9000 said:

I got the speakers on my indigo iMac G3 working this past weekend. I started by disassembling the graphite 600MHz iMac G3 I got awhile back - actually it pretty much disassembled itself since most of the plastic case was broken up and it just kinda fell apart once I started loosening some screws...

Once I had the graphite iMac apart I tried to see what parts I could swap with the indigo iMac. I tried the headphone board from the graphite iMac in the indigo but that didn't help any. I looked at all the guts in the graphite iMac on the top side where the CRT is and decided I didn't really want to mess with any of that.. so I decided to just swap the logic boards.

That worked and was easy enough to do! The indigo iMac booted up just fine with the logic board from the graphite iMac installed and the speakers work great now! Before I put the indigo iMac all back together I also swapped the HDD and optical drive from the graphite over and one of the 256MB RAM sticks. So, now I have a 600MHz Indigo iMac w/ 40GB HDD, cd burner, 512MB RAM, and the speakers work!

I'm wondering if the side IO panel on the original indigo iMac logic board is bad and that's why the speakers weren't working? The 2 front headphone ports did always work in the indigo but the audio output port on the side never did.

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Good job. Logic board swap, etc. Never heard of issues with the Harmon Kardon produced speakers for the iMac. They are excellent speakers, the only issue with them is the built in volume limiter, imho. Probably a hardware issue. But try to find a slightly larger and faster hard drive and bump up the ram to its max, it will be a world of difference.

So, I have an audio question for you guys, if anyone in this thread knows anything about speaker wattages, specifically for the G3... Does anyone know what wattages they are??? Even though my bubble Mac case is mostly empty, it's still hard to get open sometimes, and I don't remember seeing wattage listed on any of the parts of the last bubble Mac I had taken apart, 15 or so years ago, let alone online, especially in Apple's specifications documents, and was wondering if anyone knows exactly what the wattage rating of those speakers is, because if I remember correctly, the iMac requires an inline audio amp to get anything more than a whisper out of the speakers, when not connected to the mainboard, which would explain why, as I said, these speakers sound like they are whispering, when cranked, connected directly to a 3.5mm jack... I'm not even sure if I'm typing the right thing into Google to find the answers I'm looking for... I know I can get a 2x5Watt 5v USB powered amplifier board on Amazon, but I'm wondering what the wattage is, before I get too involved in picking out an amplifier... In case anyone is wondering, what I'm planning, eventually, is to put an ITX Board in there with an APU, once I see what Intel and AMD have coming up in the next few months for new designs, that I'm hearing will come out at the beginning of next year sometime, at the latest... I'm not sure what the Macrumor forum's views are on mods, but if they're any better than the Mac support forum, the post likely won't get deleted... and yes, in case you're also wondering on that, I had questions regarding modding my old Mac, that were deleted from the official Mac forums by moderators, because IDK it's so old and yet they still don't want modding talk about apple products, nevermind that they suck compared to in production equipment... Now I don't mind apple, it's just that the machine wasn't working right, and I was already wanting to do a Mac cased sleeper PC, so I killed it the rest of the way for this project