Picked up a G4 for cheap the other day and it will not boot. Upon first pressing the power button, I got no chime, no fan, no hard drive and no screen -- only the white power LED. After resetting the PRAM, I now get a chime, but nothing else has changed (though I noticed the screen kind of flickers to a deeper black when it's supposed to come on, with no backlight though). I'm suspecting a bad power supply as the drives and fan aren't working, but wondering if there's anything else that could be causing this before I go hunting for a replacement part. The PRAM battery is very likely bad, but I don't think that's the problem.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
iMac G4 15" will not boot
- Thread starter Arko2
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
I had a weird case of an iMac not showing any signs of life because of a bad PRAM battery but it was an Intel one from 2008. The previous owner couldn't figure out what was wrong with it and checked the power supply with a multimeter but couldn't find anything wrong with it. Well he wasn't taking the PRAM battery into account and that was all that was wrong with it. iMac still works to this day and was almost free because of that 😅 This should just show you that a PRAM battery can indeed cause symptoms that are akin to those of a bad PSU. If I were you, I'd open the machine and start with replacing the PRAM battery and afterwards reseating every connection.
I’ll definitely give a new battery a shot, I’ve ordered one. In other news, I’ve obtained a VGA adapter for it, and an external monitor shows that it hangs on a blank grey screen for about a minute before showing the flashing question mark folder. It is alive, but it doesn’t see the drives and the LCD is dead. Again leads me to believe the only thing getting power is the logic board, for one reason or another.