Have a Power Mac G4 MDD - Apple genius bar looked at it and told me probably need a new power supply (shutting down at will and having trouble powering up but before that the computer was running well) and I'm not sure if I should get a used or new one on ebay or if you have a better idea. Can't afford a whole new system so want to resurrect this one. What issues does anyone expect I'll have and is there any advice? Thank you!
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G4 Tower Power Supply dead
- Thread starter LisaJ
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Hi there,
buying a replacement power supply for an Apple computer will be expensive... everything that's marketed as "for Apple" is crazy expensive... but as the other poster said you can alter a PC power supply to do the same job for very cheap.
In a PC, the front panel power on switch, reset, speaker, etc. all plug in directly to the logic board and get their power from there. However on a G4 tower like yours, the power supply connects to those devices instead and there are no inputs on the motherboard to do those things. So, you would need a power supply adapter that will turn a 4-pin molex (like this guy here)-
into something with the same number of pins that will interface with the wiring from the power-on switch and other goodies from the front of your G4. Other than that a $40 PSU for a PC will work just fine for your purposes.
buying a replacement power supply for an Apple computer will be expensive... everything that's marketed as "for Apple" is crazy expensive... but as the other poster said you can alter a PC power supply to do the same job for very cheap.
In a PC, the front panel power on switch, reset, speaker, etc. all plug in directly to the logic board and get their power from there. However on a G4 tower like yours, the power supply connects to those devices instead and there are no inputs on the motherboard to do those things. So, you would need a power supply adapter that will turn a 4-pin molex (like this guy here)-
into something with the same number of pins that will interface with the wiring from the power-on switch and other goodies from the front of your G4. Other than that a $40 PSU for a PC will work just fine for your purposes.
