iMac late 2006: screen turned off, front led steadily on

[jollino]

Hello all,
coming home from work I found a really bad surprise: I had left my iMac running as usual (today it was downloading some stuff from another local machine), and I found it in a comatose state, with the screen completely off and the front led steadily on (not blinking). After attempting to move the mouse and press some keys to revive it, I went for the harsh way and turned it off by pressing the power button for a few seconds. I tried turning it on again, but it would just go to the same state: the screen not coming up, and the led turning on and staying on, without even getting the startup chime ever. The hard drive spins and I can actually hear it doing something, and I'm not sure what's going on.
I tried zapping the PRAM but I don't even get the chime and it doesn't work.

I kept it disconnected from the mains for a solid hour, but nothing changed.

It's a Core 2 Duo 2.16 GHz, the last white series from late 2006.

Is there anything else I can try before taking it to an Apple Center? Might it be the logic board? I suppose that if it were the hard drive, it would at least boot but then show me the folder icon with the blinking question mark, am I wrong?

Thank you very much in advance.

 

[jsgrabo]

if you have a mini dvi --> vga or dvi cable try hooking it up to an external monitor and see if anythings comes up. beyond that, you would probably be best off taking it to an apple store. do you have applecare?

 

[jollino]

Hello there,
I had thought about the screen but I don't have any adapter so I couldn't try that. However, as I was sleeping (no kidding) I thought that it might be the RAM... so I just tried it, and guess what? The upper slot seems to be fried, because if there is anything in there, the Mac won't boot. If I take the SO-DIMM out of the upper bank and leave one in the lower one, everything is fine. This happens even when swapping them out, so it's not a problem with the SO-DIMM...
The Apple Center and the phone Apple support open up in ten minutes, I'm going to call them and see what can be done about it. This is probably a thing that requires replacing the whole logic board, right?

 

[jsgrabo]

yes unfortunately it does. if you have applecare it'll all be taken care of without any cost to you. atleast you'll be able to use the computer now that you've figured out the problem.

 

[jollino]

Yes, I'm going to ask if I can bring it over, have them check it out, and take it back home while the logic board (or whatever needs to be replaced) arrives, as I doubt that they have it in stock for such an old machine.
Funny how I had to bring both my Macs there in the same week...