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Dead PowerMac G4

JasonElise1983

JasonElise1983

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jun 2, 2003
584
0
Between a rock and a midget
I have freely inherited an old PowerMac G4 that was given to me. It doesn't work, and i was planning on making it work, and upgrading it for the hell of it. When i press the power button, it lights up but when i let go, it goes off. The fan starts up, and it seems that everything else does as well. I searched apple support and these forums and tried everything everyone else did, but still now work. Here is what i tried.

Reset the PMU
unplugged and left unplugged for a while
unplugged everything on the inside and then replugged it all back in

i don't know what else to try. Any help will be appriciated

Its an Apple PowerMac G4 AGP or Gigabit Ethernet
400Mhz G4
20Gb HD
192 MB RAM
DVD-ROM (that doesn't work)
ATI Rage 128 PRO (that also doesn't work)
 
Take it to the source

You could always take it to an Applecentre and see what they can do for it. Tell them to look and pay 2 hrs labour or something.....

good luck

aussie_geek
 
Sounds as thought though the PowerButton's Board is dead (common in 2G PMG4s). Look on eBay for a new one. Best advice to start it up, is to flip the switch on the back, and back again then try pressing the button. You may have to do that every time until you can replace the defective Module.

Also, you may be able to get one from Apple, but that is a little less likely.

TEG
 
do you know anyone that has a sawtooth or gigabit eternet g4? if so swap the parts untill the other g4 stops working then you have your defective part


what happened to it in the first place? water, droped, power surge?
 
What switch are you talking about on the back? If it is the Red one, i tried that and it still didnt' work. No, i don't really know anyone with an Sawtooth G4 that would let me experiment with it. The guy before me said it quit working when his power went out in his house. He had an MDD that the same thing happened to, he reset the PMU on it and it worked, but not on this one. Go figure... Thanks for your help, i might just end up taking it somewhere. I found a place here that specializes in Macs, and will look at it for $50 flat rate, since they do bussiness with the company i used to work for. Unless anyone has any better ideas, i'm all out.
 
JasonElise1983 said:
What switch are you talking about on the back? If it is the Red one, i tried that and it still didnt' work. No, i don't really know anyone with an Sawtooth G4 that would let me experiment with it. The guy before me said it quit working when his power went out in his house. He had an MDD that the same thing happened to, he reset the PMU on it and it worked, but not on this one. Go figure... Thanks for your help, i might just end up taking it somewhere. I found a place here that specializes in Macs, and will look at it for $50 flat rate, since they do bussiness with the company i used to work for. Unless anyone has any better ideas, i'm all out.
Click to expand...
If the video card is bad how you going to power it up? try a new card would be my first advice. get another video card that you know is good and try that and make sure you pull out anything in a pci slot. go from there.
 
Not sure how its gona work on a Mac, but on ATX PC's you can just connect two pins on the Mobo to start it without a switch. Perhaps if you disconnect the cable going to the switch module you could identify two such pins, then use a paperclip to touch them both at once (on a PC, there is no need to keep them connected after you give it a jump). But try not to touch anything else at the same time. :)
 
dead G4

I have the same oldschool G4s at my highschool. lots of them have died due to misuse and abuse over the past 5 years. In one occurence, i switched the battery of a nonworking G4 with that of a working one, and they both wored after. One kid kicked a G4 and his worked for a while after and then it completely stopped(idiot). Umm... and another G4 that wasnt turning on had like 3 different types of memory in it and when we took two chips out it worked fine... I adopted that same one and a few weeks later i put in three 256 chips of the same brand memory and it worked very well.... it seems to me that there could be so many problems my friend... maybe trying these things out will help.
 
JasonElise1983 said:
Thanks, but i was trying not to take it somewhere. I live in Arkansas, and there arn't a whole lot of people who work on macs here, and they all charge an arm and a leg. Thanks anyway.
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where in arkansas?

if you live in the northwest or in little rock, i think compusa (and some store in nwa) offer mac repair services

im from hot springs.
 
Have you tried booring from a CD or an other HD?
My G4/400 tried to start but "timed out" and shut down again. This happened very frequently but after doing a file permission repair it has improved but not gone away completly, so I leave it on att all times.

Sometimes a "dirty" trick will work. Like during booting forcing a reboot. In some cases a reboot gets through what stalls a normal boot.

Having nonfunctional cards or drives connected can lock up the booting.

The old faitful solution of replacing the battery can solve a lot of odd problems :rolleyes:
 
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