I've got on opportunity to pick up a power mac 2.5ghz quad core with 8gb of ram (no hard drive). This is all off a craigslist ad, so I'm giving you all the information that I know. He says that it has a brand new power supply, logic board and ram. He says it boots up and freezes on the question mark screen, which is obviously a hard drive thing, but the thing that is strange to me is he says that it has a "red led error". What is that, I can't find anything online about it, is that related to the hard drive issue? Anyways he ask 175, do you think that this is a good deal? thanks for the input guys
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Input about a 2.5ghz quad core
- Thread starter Sonhascome
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Depends on what diagnostic LED is flashing and when. Its 100% normal for the red checkstop LED to flash once when the machine is powered on. See if you can get him to tell you which LED lights up and when.
If all that has been replaced, the owner is chasing problems with parts..It's bad business to do that with any machine
But if it's visible from the front, it seems this one which lights when air deflector isn't installed. It's visible through "cheese greater" (if it lights ofc).
OP, if you're familiar with G5 internals and you have required tools, you could take a risk.
In worst case, you should easily get back your $175 by parting this thing out.
Before you pay, check if there are any leaks from LCS if possible.
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thinking maybe I should stay clear of this thing, I haven't messed with the power macs much, I've pretty much exclusively worked with macbooks and macbook pros. Really appreciate the input guys.
sounds to me like either the cpus or logic board is roasted. their actually extremely simple to fix and maintain, you just have to take the time to learn how to do it right. the whole thing is no more than 3 parts really not counting the fans and your harddrives. It only a logic board, power supply, and cpu unit. They're easy to diagnose too, theres 8 leds on the front inside of the board to let you know roughly whats wrong, ASD 2.6.3 is far more in depth in terms of singling out the problem. The only real way is what GermanyChris said which is the most costly but allows you to truly see what is at fault. If its flakey lowball him for like $100 something, you can buy working used logicboard and cpu for $300 or under if you look enough, half hour 10-12 screws and a little trial and error and it should beup and running like new. If the cpu is broke it will boot and hang, if the logic is bust it will turn on then shut off real quick, or it will stay with a black screen and the fans will go into thermal runaway mode from not finding the rom to boot from.