G4 won't boot... no startup chime

[kirkbross]

I recently reinstalled a clean Tiger on my old MDD G4 with the intent on giving it to a friend of mine in Oregon. Everything was smooth here in Los Angeles. Got the OS on and running sweet... 10.4.11 combo update... all's well.

I drive up to Oregon, set it up in his office using his old CRT monitor and power it on. It chimes and manages to find the Tech Tool eDrive recovery partition, but not the OS on the boot drive. Then, seconds later, screen of death/kernel panic and no boots or startup chimes thereafter.

Steps I've taken:

• I have reset the PMU
• I have removed all peripherals, including viddy, SATA adapter and all but on stick of RAM
• Tried every stick of RAM by itself

No startup chime -- just a fan for a few seconds then a super fan kicks in... no signal to monitor at all.

Strange symptom: at times power was making it to the drives, and other times not. (determined by me putting my hand on the drive to feel its vibration or lack thereof during boot).

Do I need a new PSU? And if so where to buy?

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Dual 867 MDD G4
SATA adapter/w 300GB Tiger boot drive and 200GB data drive (w/ Panther still installed)
120GB data drive on IDE 66 bus w/Tech Tool recovery / restore partition
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[DewGuy1999]

Have you checked to see if all the cables/connections are tight?

 

[goMac]

Sounds like a dead HD to me or loose cable. A long car trip could have rattled something.

Doesn't sound like a power issue to me. The drives will not always vibrate while they are on.

Edit: If you're having display issues too, it sounds a lot more like something is loose.

 

[kirkbross]

Sounds like a dead HD to me or loose cable. A long car trip could have rattled something.

Doesn't sound like a power issue to me. The drives will not always vibrate while they are on.

Edit: If you're having display issues too, it sounds a lot more like something is loose.

Did very thorough cable check. Remember, no startup chime, so it's not even looking for an OS on the HD at that point (I believe).