Dead PowerMac G4

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

 

is there a point where it will stop starting up if you keep on holding the power button?

 

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?

 

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.

 

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