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G4 wont start without logic board reset

E

elegy

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 17, 2004
11
0
new york
I have a sawtooth G4. lately i have been having difficulties restarting the machine. the green light would go on but no screen response or hard drive spin. only if i open the computer and reset the logic board it works. another restart and same story, light on, no screen no HD. i've had this computer for a few years and this has only began occurring in the last couple of months on irregular basis and now it's every time.
Thanks
 
stoid said:
Could a dead battery be causing this?
Click to expand...
Probably, the dead batteries can cause all sorts of funky problems, the battery can be found at a Radio Shack if he doesn't want to drive to around to an Apple Store.

Little purple litium can battery (1/2 AA size).
 
Battery eh...

thanks
so a dead battery would cause that? how can i get a new one? if that is the reason, power to U!
Liron
 
BTW... Apple Store wont sell the batteries, I called and the discussion goes
Me: Hey I was wondering if you guys could sell me a pram battery for a G3 Blue/White Powermac
Apple Guy: No sorry we dont sell parts, but if you bring your mac we can special order you the part

So I went to radioshack, $15 for a damn battery that didnt even solve my problem :mad:
 
i saw your post earlier. thanks. i decided to post my case as well because mine works fine if i press the reset button on the logic board. only when i shut down or restart i have to do it again. did u try to reset the logic board?
 
I tried the Cuda button, including just hitting it with power off, then holding it down for 15 minutes, removing battery for a sec then hitting button and replacing it, none of these work sadly. What process are you using to reset the logic board?
 
point665,
i just shut down the computer, disconnect from the electricity, press the button for about 10 seconds, and presto... the machine works flawlessly, until i shut it down. everytime i reset the board i get the "date before 19..." error.
 
If you are running it on a higher resolution in OSX try turning it down to 800*600, reboot, (you may have to hit CUDA again) and once back in osx reboot again... see if this helps, I believe my resolution was a problem on the g3.
 
elegy said:
point665,
i just shut down the computer, disconnect from the electricity, press the button for about 10 seconds, and presto... the machine works flawlessly, until i shut it down. everytime i reset the board i get the "date before 19..." error.
Click to expand...
People usually put in a new battery when the machine cannot remember the time, resolution, etc.

The stuff that is in PRAM, and needs the battery to stay there.

With the B&W G3 and/or Yikes G4, if the battery is dead -- there is a good chance that pressing the power button will do nothing (that's been my experience with this motherboard design.)
 
My problem is solved, I had the machine running fine when booted at a high resolution, but when it wrote to pram the machine could not boot at that high of a resolution, so i had to flush pram everytime i booted, until i downgraded resolution.
 
point656
so how did you solve it? i just got a battery and it's no help.
u downgraded the resolution, and left it low? will i be able to use high resolution?
thanks
 
After I downgraded from 1280*1024 to 800*600 and found that it solved my problem I went up to 1024*768... I could try going higher but I dont like 1152 by whatever...
 
GRRRRRRRRRR
after 2 days of the computer working, it's dead again. i have to reset the logic board to get it to run!
any advice? i tried the resolution decrease and it worked, but when i went back to my old high res (23" apple cinema) its dead again. what happened to my machine?
 
Looks like you wont be able to run it in the high resolution, look for a lower resolution that it will work at :(
 
but how can that be? it worked until 3 or 2 weeks ago! what happened? any ideas, what could cause that? what changed?
what makes no sense is that it does work when i restart and put the high resolution back on, it just wont restart with it.
thanks for any input
liron
 
i zapped the ram, and if zapping the pmu mean pressing the button the logic board i did. doing that is the only way i can start my machine up now.
any advice?
 
I dont know what caused the resolution problem, have you lately updated drivers or any software? It could be causing it... Otherwise might be a vid card failing... not sure though.
 
a video card problem..? interesting. when i restart the machine it works fine, it only happens when i shut down. only then i need to reset the logic board.
its very frustrating. still no solution. thanks for all the help though.
 
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