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Can anyone with a G4 help me out?

L

livingfortoday

macrumors 68030
Original poster
Nov 17, 2004
2,903
4
The Msp
Okay, my Cube died a while back, and I can't tell if it's the motherboard, the processor, or the video card that's to blame. I can't boot it up in target disk mode, so it might not be the video card, but ever since the heatsink fell off that thing I don't trust it.

Anyways.

I'm wondering if anyone with a G4 would be willing to test out my processor (450Mhz G4) and my video card (Geforce 2 - AGP card) to see if they work? I would be willing to mail 'em to you, and enclose some money for return postage. I don't know anyone near me with a G4, which is why I'm going this unusual route. I would prefer it to be someone with an established presence on MR, if possible, too.

Let me know if you're willin' to help me out. Thanks.
 
livingfortoday said:
Okay, my Cube died a while back, and I can't tell if it's the motherboard, the processor, or the video card that's to blame. I can't boot it up in target disk mode, so it might not be the video card, but ever since the heatsink fell off that thing I don't trust it.

Anyways.

I'm wondering if anyone with a G4 would be willing to test out my processor (450Mhz G4) and my video card (Geforce 2 - AGP card) to see if they work? I would be willing to mail 'em to you, and enclose some money for return postage. I don't know anyone near me with a G4, which is why I'm going this unusual route. I would prefer it to be someone with an established presence on MR, if possible, too.

Let me know if you're willin' to help me out. Thanks.
Click to expand...

plug in your speakers to hear the start up sound to OS X?
Hearing any beeps?
This article will probably help
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58442

Products introduced after October, 1999 use a revised set of power on self-test beeps during startup. This article describes each one.

Refer to article 58183: "Power On Self-Test Beep Definition - Part 1" for information on earlier computers.


The power on self-test resides in the ROM of the computer. This test runs whenever the computer is turned on after being fully shut down (the power-on self-test does not run if the computer is only restarted).
If a fault is detected during the test, you will not hear a normal startup chime. Instead, the system will beep as explained below. If you experience one of these beeps, you may call your Apple Authorized Service Provider for additional troubleshooting assistance.

1 beep = no RAM installed
2 beeps = incompatible RAM types
3 beeps = no good banks
4 beeps = no good boot images in the boot ROM (and/or bad sys config block)
5 beeps = processor is not usable

In addition to the beeps, on some computers the power LED will flash a corresponding number of times plus one. The LED will repeat the sequence after approximately a 5-second pause. The tones are only played once.

Note: In this case, a flash is considered to be 1/4 second or 250 ms or greater in length.
Click to expand...

if you don't hear any beeps then you can rule out processors. if you hear os x start chime or 4 beeps that means you mobo is ok and your video is bad (in theory). It would be possible to hear the bad image beep code and the video port of your mobo is bad or the card itself.
 
I get no beeps, flashes or anything like that. It has no system installed on the hard drive, so I boot from the Tiger DVD (tried with Panther CD as well - and have used two different drives for this too), but nothing ever shows up on screen. The motherboard lights up like normal, but nothing happens. I feel the hard disk spin up, but that's it. It just kind of hangs.

This Cube had been heavily modded (with a dual 1.5Ghz Powerlogix G4), and I think that might have damaged the motherboard somehow. I had to replace the Powerlogix board three times, as it kept causing kernel panics and screwing up my system. So. I don't know what the problem is exactly. I figure if someone could test out those two parts for me, I could at least narrow it down a bit.
 
livingfortoday said:
I get no beeps, flashes or anything like that. It has no system installed on the hard drive, so I boot from the Tiger DVD (tried with Panther CD as well - and have used two different drives for this too), but nothing ever shows up on screen. The motherboard lights up like normal, but nothing happens. I feel the hard disk spin up, but that's it. It just kind of hangs.

This Cube had been heavily modded (with a dual 1.5Ghz Powerlogix G4), and I think that might have damaged the motherboard somehow. I had to replace the Powerlogix board three times, as it kept causing kernel panics and screwing up my system. So. I don't know what the problem is exactly. I figure if someone could test out those two parts for me, I could at least narrow it down a bit.
Click to expand...

pull all the parts and see if you get beep codes if the specified parts and slow add them back. you'd at least verify a lot of the functions of the mobo. you ever consider it is the hd?
 
superbovine said:
pull all the parts and see if you get beep codes if the specified parts and slow add them back. you'd at least verify a lot of the functions of the mobo. you ever consider it is the hd?
Click to expand...

Yeah, I guess I'll have to piece it back together and see if I can get it to beep at me. Though I don't think the Cube had an internal speaker, and I don't have any more USB ones... hmm. Well, we'll see. And I don't think it's the hard drive, since the once I'm using for it is seen by other Macs, and it would have at least shown me the blinking question mark if it was missing the file system - and I get no video output at all.
 
livingfortoday said:
Yeah, that's what I figured too. I mean, it's back to being basically stock now (except the video card), so I dunno.
Click to expand...

Change the video back!
 
Okay, I got it to finally boot up! Pieced it all together, used an external FW DVD drive, and this is what I got (see attachment).

So... I'm assuming this is a video card problem. Because that sure as heck ain't normal. I'll try it out on my CRT as well, to make sure it's not the LCD that's having problems interacting with it, but I seem to have narrowed it down to one key broken part...
 

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