G4 cube failure

[Dicere]

I scored a G4 cube from a reasonably local seller (I'm now in Western Australia, "reasonably local" is a day trip here) some months ago. Lovely kid, he'd upgraded the cpu to a 450mhz, he'd stocked it full of ram, he'd added the Airport card, and was very proud of what he'd done. I brought it home, plugged it in, and while the power is on, the light comes up the top, there's a little green light and a little red light at the base, nothing whatsoever comes up on the screen. (Apple Cinema display 24 inch). No sound comes out either, but I don't have the speakers so can't tell if it's passing POST or not.

I had a look at it again this evening, and took it out of the case. I took out a stick of ram and reseated the others, checked what was easily visible - everything looks right. Plugged it in, fired it up, and same result as before.

Any thoughts? I don't want to take it back to the kid - I know that's the sensible option, but I don't want him to feel like a failure. If anyone can give me some possible options, I'd be really happy to listen.

I'm keeping it regardless of whether it works or not - my chance of coming across one again (at a price point I can manage) is, um, remote.

 

[Hrududu]

450MHz would be the base level speed, they never came slower than that. If you're getting it to power on with green & red lights inside, that is a good sign. You are correct that without the speakers you won't hear a chime, but can you hear any activity from the DVD drive waking up or the HDD spinning? Also, when you say 24" Cinema display, you're talking about the 2008-2010 vintage display right? The one with the Mini Display Port connection? If that is the one, you would need an ADC->DVI->Mini Display Port set of adapters to make it work, as going from the VGA->Mini Display Port isn't really possible. I'd highly suggest tracking down another monitor to see if you can get something a little older to play nicely with the Cube's video card (which would seem to be stock).

 

[CooperBox]

I scored a G4 cube from a reasonably local seller (I'm now in Western Australia, "reasonably local" is a day trip here) some months ago. Lovely kid, he'd upgraded the cpu to a 450mhz, he'd stocked it full of ram, he'd added the Airport card, and was very proud of what he'd done. I brought it home, plugged it in, and while the power is on, the light comes up the top, there's a little green light and a little red light at the base, nothing whatsoever comes up on the screen. (Apple Cinema display 24 inch). No sound comes out either, but I don't have the speakers so can't tell if it's passing POST or not.

I had a look at it again this evening, and took it out of the case. I took out a stick of ram and reseated the others, checked what was easily visible - everything looks right. Plugged it in, fired it up, and same result as before.

Any thoughts? I don't want to take it back to the kid - I know that's the sensible option, but I don't want him to feel like a failure. If anyone can give me some possible options, I'd be really happy to listen.

I'm keeping it regardless of whether it works or not - my chance of coming across one again (at a price point I can manage) is, um, remote.

Your comment, "he'd upgraded the cpu to a 450mhz" had me head-scratching too.
If I were you, contact the seller and ask him to tell you precisely the mods he performed in addition to adding RAM. Also check the amount of RAM, because if he "maxed out RAM" you should have a total of 1.5GHz on board.
As correctly stated by Hrududu it's not possible to upgrade the processor to 450MHz, any processor upgrade would normally take it to 500MHz, or with a third-party CPU upgrade up to 1.8GHz.
Regarding nothing on the 24" Apple Cinema display, do you have a 16 MB ATI Rage 128 Pro installed. If so I thought that card only supported the smaller 17" display - although others more informed than myself may be able to correct on this.

 

[Dicere]

He might have said "upgrading *from* 450mhz. It was the very first time I had ever seen an actual Cube, information wasn't being processed accurately. My brain was busy saying, "Wow... wow..."
I meant a 23 inch Cinema HD display, and I've been trying to hook it up via a DVI to VGA adaptor. I just spent $100 on a 20 inch Apple Studio display, but it sounds like it's going to require a better graphics card than the cube has. Luckily I have a G5 Power Mac (only a single 1.8 cpu) sitting on the floor of my study, and my husband has mentioned several times that he finds a 13 inch 2010 MacBook not the best thing to write on, so it won't go to waste... and I'll just have to save pennies until I can find/afford a 17 inch studio display that will post here! Or find the 32MB graphics card. Stranger things have happened.
I can hear the hard drive spinning. And it definitely has 1.5 GB ram. So I'm going to pop it gently back on the bookshelf and promise it that it's time will come... Thanks hugely for the responses.
[doublepost=1534150418][/doublepost]Just did some checking in the user manual for the display, and guess what it says:
"What You Need

To use your 20-inch or 23-inch Apple Cinema Display, you need:• MacOSXv10.2.8 or later and one of the following computers:

• Power Mac G5
• Power Mac G4 with a DVI port*
• PowerBook with a DVI port."

RTFM, me. So this one can be marked as solved. (I have two Sawtooth G4s here that have DVI ports. Seems weird they have the capability and the cube doesn't. I assume it's a question of heat dispersal?)

 

[weckart]

Regarding nothing on the 24" Apple Cinema display, do you have a 16 MB ATI Rage 128 Pro installed. If so I thought that card only supported the smaller 17" display - although others more informed than myself may be able to correct on this.

My Cube still has that card. 1600x1200 is as far as it will go. You can drive a larger screen if you lower the resolution.

 

[mode11]

The Cube's R128 has ADC and VGA connectors. Only one can be used at a time. ADC is essentially DVI + power + USB. It can be adapted to plain DVI with a simple passive adapter, but these adapters are very rare.

The ADC port can definitely support 1600 x 1024 (the resolution of the original 22" Cinema Display). The official max supported resolution of the R128 in the Cube is 1920 x 1200 - but on the VGA port (digital outputs were often lower resolution than analogue outputs in those days, likely due to available encoders, as well as the limitations of single-link DVI). The R128 won't run the later 23" ADC display (1920 x 1200) or 20" ADC display (1680 x 1050).

If you have a display with a VGA input, this would be the most reliable way of testing. Also, presumably you tested out the Cube when you collected it (after driving so far)? I assume it worked at that point? If it still doesn't work on a VGA display, perhaps something got unseated on the drive home.