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How Did Your PowerPC Mac Die?

SuperKerem

SuperKerem

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Oct 29, 2012
863
261
Hi! I am curious to see how people's PowerPC macs finally stopped working. Also, do PMG5s suddenly stop working or is it a matter of time and it gets worse and worse. I'm worried about my Late 2005 G5 suddenly breaking! Any tips on making it last longer?
 
My old TiBook/400 died while browsing an internet forum in November 2009. Machine suddenly froze. I rebooted, got to the login screen and it froze again after login. Each successive reboot I got less and less far until it just would not start at all.
That logicboard was 8.5 years old. I replaced it about a year and a half later and it was working fine – until my daughter sent it flying off the couch. At that point I had two 17" PowerBooks, my wife had a 12" PowerBook and my son had a 1Ghz DVI (TiBook) that needed a screen. So, I used it for parts.

A month ago I came in to work and the 1.8Ghz (late 2004) G5 had it's fans revving. Kernel panic (or so I thought). I rebooted it and it would not recognize ANY drive. Messed with it for about twenty minutes before I had to abandon it as a lost cause.

My boss bought that Mac in February 2005 and it was on 24/7 since then. He gave it to me and I swapped out the logicboard (the symptoms pointed to a fried logicboard). Since we tend to have lots of power failures at work over the weekend when no one is here I can only speculate that either it was a power surge or the board just gave out. In any case, the replacement logicboard has a serial number that indicates it was made in the US. I assume that it was probably a government G5 in it's past life. But now, it's in MY G5 (the work G5, which my boss gave me free of charge) which is now at home and doing just fine. The only thing wrong with that G5 was the logicboard. Cost me $57 to bring it back to life.
 
With my G5 Macintosh Pro it was the power supply. Worked beautifully up until the day I started it up to and electric burning smell.
 
Powerbook G4 aluminum 12inch 1.33ghz


I was watching a slenderman documentary on dvd while camping. And it suprised me and I punched its screen out without thinking.
 
iMac G5 florescent tube failed. I ran it off a monitor for awhile, then the power supply caught fire. I kept the iMac but the PSU stunk so bad I disposed of it. A pair of powermac g5s died due to apple's poor design / assembly process. Both have bad ram solder. Just look at them, all sad on the right side of this photo:
 

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Early 2010 - 700MHz iBook G3 = graphics chip.
Late 2011 - 800MHz TiBook = LCD.
Early 2012 - 1.6GHz PowerMac G5 = logicboard.
Early 2012 - 867MHz 12" PowerBook G4 = logicboard.
Mid 2013 - 233MHz Bondi-Blue iMac G3 = suspect caps. (haven't ripped the PSU open yet).

...Yeah I haven't always been known for my good luck :p
 
Goftrey said:
Late 2011 - 800MHz TiBook = LCD.
Click to expand...
No Mac should die just because of an LCD. :)

I've swapped out three LCDs so far and that's made three otherwise perfectly functional Macs just fine again.

Unless there was some other sort of failure…?
 
eyoungren said:
No Mac should die just because of an LCD. :)

I've swapped out three LCDs so far and that's made three otherwise perfectly functional Macs just fine again.

Unless there was some other sort of failure…?
Click to expand...

I thought you were going to say that ;)

The whole unit was in pretty bad nick as it was & I just couldn't justify putting any sort of money or time into a machine that wasn't worth more than sack of potatoes.

The price of those TiBooks was fluctuating so much at the time too - I ended up getting lucky & made a small profit being sold as it was with the bad LCD.

...Who knows, maybe the old dog didn't die. Maybe the guy who bought it went out & put a new LCD in & is still using it to this day.

I do know that the G5 went to someone who was doing a hackintosh build, and the 12" PowerBook went to a friend who wanted it for show (as it was mint, with the original box etc.)
 
My MDD - university got to it and pull parts. Just needs one fan and I have the fastest OS9 booting machine. Good buy for $10.
 
Blue and White G3. First, one of the sound channels stopped working. I worked around that by using a USB headset. Then, maybe a year later, I started to get pink spots on the screen. Replacing the video card didn't fix it so it's currently gathering dust in my basement.
 
Goftrey said:
I thought you were going to say that ;)

The whole unit was in pretty bad nick as it was & I just couldn't justify putting any sort of money or time into a machine that wasn't worth more than sack of potatoes.

The price of those TiBooks was fluctuating so much at the time too - I ended up getting lucky & made a small profit being sold as it was with the bad LCD.

...Who knows, maybe the old dog didn't die. Maybe the guy who bought it went out & put a new LCD in & is still using it to this day.

I do know that the G5 went to someone who was doing a hackintosh build, and the 12" PowerBook went to a friend who wanted it for show (as it was mint, with the original box etc.)
Click to expand...
I get it. My third LCD swap was the LCD from my "dead" TiBook/400 to my son's 1Ghz DVI TiBook. Technically the 400 was still "working" but it just wasn't worth the effort to keep it going when no one was really able to use it because it kept freezing. Turns out that when taking it apart to get the LCD the case just broke apart on it's own. So, that pretty much ended it's life right there.
 
Hmmm lets see here...

My first Mac...an iBook G3 graphite clamshell died from a water spill years ago. 2005 14" iBook G4 was replaced by Apple with a MacBook in 2007 after 4 repairs in a row for logic board and poor repair work courtesy of Flextronics. And more recently, my PowerMac G5 DP 1.8GHz logic board died. I had a 12" PB 1.5GHz, but it didn't die and I sold it off a few years back.
 
A Digital Audio G4, power supply failure after sitting all weekend, come Monday morning on boot up, nothing. A G3 All-in-one, power supply again. It popped like a cap gun and never ran again. Had another G4 MDD die with a bad power supply only after two years of use.

Lesson from these failures, I do not turn my remaining PPCs off. I'm writing this on a 1999 B/W G3, non-stock see sig.
 
Dane D. said:
Lesson from these failures, I do not turn my remaining PPCs off.
Click to expand...
I've always been one of those people that leave them on, even before I converted from PC to Mac. With my PowerBooks I just close the lid and my G5 has been on continuously since my boss bought it in February 2005. Probably one of the reasons it lasted as long as it did before the logicboard fried.
 
My PB died on the floor of Charles de Gaulle airport after it fell out of my unzipped bag after security check.

Prior to that the headphone socket had stopped working.

MDD - no problems.
iMac G4 no problems
Mac Mini - hard drive failed and was replaced
PM G5 - no problems
MB - no problems
MBP - no problems
 
PB was getting flaky and the fan was starting to sound funny, so I decided to set it while I could since the battery was also almost dead. It was about 6 years old when I sold it.

As for my PowerMac (late 2005 G5), the liquid cooling system leaked and fired a processor when it was just under 3 years old so was fixed under AppleCare. At about 5 years old I needed an Intel Mac and there were signs of the liquid cooling system might be about to go again. So I sold it while I could.

The place I sold both to ran diagnostics so they knew what they were getting.
 
Zeke D said:
A pair of powermac g5s died due to apple's poor design / assembly process. Both have bad ram solder. Just look at them, all sad on the right side of this photo:
Click to expand...

:eek: What if this happens to my G5! I hope not, fingers crossed it will last for a bit more.
 
2004 G5 tower: still running. no repairs needed. optical drive failed.
2001 G4 tower: still running. no repairs needed.
2001 iMac G3: still running. no repairs needed.
iMac G5: still running. no repairs needed.
eMac: still running. no repairs needed.

2x iMac G5s with iSights: still working fine, just when I bought them secondhand they already had lines down the displays. In my experience that doesn't seem to get any worse though.

iMac G4: display failed after some jackass twisted the poor screen around too hard "OMG THIS COMPUTER HAS A SCREEN THAT SPINS AROUND!!!!"

Macbook Pro #1: three failed logic boards, three failed superdrives, two new batteries.
MBP #2: logic board and battery, stolen before I could get it repaired.
MBP #3: logic board, battery, superdrive.
Intel iMac: logic board (repaired)
 
Dane D. said:
A Digital Audio G4, power supply failure after sitting all weekend, come Monday morning on boot up, nothing. A G3 All-in-one, power supply again. It popped like a cap gun and never ran again. Had another G4 MDD die with a bad power supply only after two years of use.

Lesson from these failures, I do not turn my remaining PPCs off. I'm writing this on a 1999 B/W G3, non-stock see sig.
Click to expand...

It may help :p http://atxg4.com/
Even good atx powersupplies are cheap nowadays
 
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