24" iMac G5 has trouble starting up

[drGreene]

I hope this is the right place to be posting this...

My 5 year old 24" iMac G5 has been having some trouble lately.
I've heard lots of different things and I am just hoping for some clarity.

-It was in a car wreck with me months back and wouldn't start up.
-I brought it to the Apple store, they reinstalled OSX Leopard. It was all good.
-Till it froze died again and Apple said the only fix was a new Logic Board (which I can't afford)
-a friend who owns computer repair shop reinstalled OSX. The 3rd time it took. He thinks I just need a new hard drive.

I have it running right now, slowly. But it takes me numerous times to get it to start up:

>Sometimes it will come up on just the grey screen, and then the fans will start going very loudly after a minute or two.
>Sometimes the slightly darker grey screen with the Apple logo will come up and sit there...forever.
>Sometimes I'll press opt and start it up by selecting my hard drive and pressing the arrow (but half the time, the hard drive won't show)

-I've pressed opt+cmd+p+r
-I've fixed disk permission with disk utility (and verified and fixed disk as well)
-I've run every process and cleaning and maintenance and script that onyX has.
And I still have trouble starting up.

Has anyone had this problem before?
Does anyone have any idea what it might be?

I'm waiting on buying the new 27" i7 iMac soon, but not till the screen problem is fixed. Therefore I don't have tons of $$ to fix this one...
I'm hoping it just needs a new hard drive.

Thanks for any help you can give!
-drGreene

P.S. Slight sidenote: Does anyone know what exactly is happening if you press and hold the power button BEFORE start up?
The computer will give a loud (different pitched) beeeeep. And then the power light with flash a few times before everything starts up.
I did it on accident this morning. Its new to me...can't find anything on it.

Thanks again for any help!!

 

[AWalkerStudios]

Still no help for you? sucks man. this be your bro's roommate by the way.

 

[rtrt]

hmm read this yesterday but didn't think i could respond to most of it - so left it for someone more knowledgeable........

ok if it were my mac then i'd focus in on what i could check cheaply/for free.

you mention a car smash - maybe something has been knocked out of position. open imac up and look at everything carefully - memory, cable connectors etc. might be worth disconnecting/reconnecting and removing/reinstalling - use a small flashlight to see if anything looks suspect

if you have the macos disc you could boot from that in the optical drive - that would take the hdd and the sata port on the logic board out of the equation.

alternatively if you have another hdd then you could use that as your boot drive - same port on logic board.

the above will let you start to narrow things down a bit. keep us posted