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PowerMac G5 - Few Issues

lonewolf12016

lonewolf12016

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 20, 2018
16
22
Southampton, UK
Hey

I got my hands on a Power Mac G5
Model: A1047 EMC: 1969
Seriel No: CK411HCSQVJ

I got it to mainly play with, but would like it back to working order.
When I got it, the guy said it wouldn't start up, it would light up but wouldn't do anything.
I found out why, the PSU was so full of junk it was causing it to over heat and the fans wouldn't spin, so I cleaned it all out, and bingo, It will power up.

Next issue, the second CPU had a burning smell and it would shut down after start up, I removed it, and it starts up, you get the chime, I test the second CPU in the top slot on its own and it won't start up.
So I have one good CPU but one dead one.

Second issue, if I leave the Graphics card in, it will start up and chime, but there is a massive non stop screaming noise, like a constant beeping that there is a error, the fan starts on the GPU but automatically shuts back off, If you remove the GPU, it will start up fine and no more warning noise.
I can't test the card in any other machine but I reckon the GPU is dead or the guy put in a card that really isn't meant for the machine, as all the cards I have seen don't have a VGA port on them or look anything like this one.

I am wondering what CPU upgrades/replacements I can do, so I have two working CPU's in it.
Also what GPU is best for this machine, even tho this is a old machine would be nice getting it back to its glory working days.
Any suggest on a decent HHD?? It has the original Apple one still in it so not sure how much life that would have in it.
Any help would be great, I have supplied pictures below.

Thank You
 

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The 6800 GT you have appears to be a PC version, but It may have been flashed for Mac by the previous owner.

It looks like there is a white molex power plug on the card. Is this connected to your G5’s power supply? The easiest route is to get a molex Y-splitter and share the 12v power from the optical drive with the GPU. If the graphics card is not receiving enough power then it is likely making that long beeping noise.

The Apple OEM 6800 GT which I have in my G5 DP 2.0ghz draws it’s extra power from the logic board at the ADC power slot, which was used for powering Apple Cinema Displays on different cards.

In terms of replacing the CPU, there are typically plenty of 2.0Ghz G5 CPUs floating around on ebay. It looks like your G5 is possibly the 7,3 model (the SN indicates early 2004). So any 970 CPU should work (not 970fx or 970MP).

It’s worth doing a repaste on the CPUs. Use a high quality paste. Grizzly Kryonaut paste is non-conductive and has a 12.5w/mk rating. I used a 6.5w/mk silver based product on my recent G5 repaste and it has been overheating mid-process and putting itself to sleep. It only runs on Reduced CPU Mode now, so I’ll be redoing it once the Kryonaut paste lands.

Once you install the CPU, download, burn and boot from the (Apple Service Diagnostics) ASD v2.5.8 Disc, then recalibrate the CPUs together.

For HDDs, @eyoungren has previously recommended a particular WD SATA III drive which can be jumpered down to SATA II spec. Search the forum here for more.

I still have SATA I and II drives in my G5s, so I haven’t had to play with jumper settings (yet). You could also install an mSATA SSD with a suitable SATA adapter. Don’t spend extra money on a 6G speed SSD as it will only operate at 1.5G.

Good job clearing out the PSU, it is a time consuming task to tear down the G5.

Let us know how you get on with the repairs.

-AphoticD
 
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That 6800 card looks a lot like the one I have/had in my Quicksilver G4.

As I understood it, it only functioned in the Quicksilver and was problematic in any other Mac. If this truly was a flashed card that was perhaps pulled from a QS G4 this might explain the issues with it here.

Western Digital drives are my go to drive. Good quality and because WD allows it you can jumper down modern SATA III drives to work in a G5.

I currently have a 4TB WD Enterprise drive as my secondary drive on my Quad with a 1TB Black as my primary drive. The Enterprise drive had to be jumpered down before the G5 would see it. My recommendation would be either a 1 or 2TB Black or Blue drive (whatever is cheapest) as a boot drive with as large a capacity WD secondary drive you can get.

The Enterprise drives tend to be dependable and reliable. They are designed for servers. But as large capacity drives you aren't going to be able to boot off them, which is why I recommend the Blue or Black for booting.

I do not recommend WD Red drives, particulary the 5400rpm drives. Unless you intend to turn your G5 into some sort of NAS that will have constant read/writes these are really not the type of drive for regular computing. They are designed for heavy I/O. I also do not recommend WD Green drives except if you intend them to be used as a storage drive (in which case the Enterprise model would be better). I have a Green drive (in a USB dock) and it's never been fast. Enterprise drives are more storage oriented but they are not slow like the Greens. Greens are designed to use as little power as possible and remain as cool as possible so that's why they tend to be slow.

Back to the GPU. If you could get a Radeon FireGL X3, one flashed to work on Mac that would probably be a very good option. It's a workstation video card, you can get them flashed on eBay for about $50 and they are pretty powerful - certainly more powerful than the 6800.

I have a 2.7 DP G5 that will eventually be receiving my FireGL.
 
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I unplug the molex from the optical drive and put it into the graphics card.
It starts up and get the chime and no long beep screeching your ears off, I have tryied two monitors, used VGA to VGA, DVI to HDMI and also VGA to display port, I get nothing on the screen.
Also after awhile I noticed all the Fans slowly picking up speed to the point it sounds like a jet engine, I am putting that down to the mis config with the CPU's, would I be right?
I am starting to think the guy who I got this from had tried messing with it and screwed a few things up in the process.
I even unpluged the hard drive so it would display the folder missing screen, just so i know it wasnt a OS boot issue.
Dont even know if there is anything on the Hard Drive, Hoping to do a clean install anyways.

Thank you for any help
Yeah it was a task taking the PSU out, especially when I was doing it blind and didnt use any tutorials lol Trail and Error
 
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lonewolf12016 said:
I unplug the molex from the optical drive and put it into the graphics card.
It starts up and get the chime and no long beep screeching your ears off, I have tryied two monitors, used VGA to VGA, DVI to HDMI and also VGA to display port, I get nothing on the screen.
Also after awhile I noticed all the Fans slowly picking up speed to the point it sounds like a jet engine, I am putting that down to the mis config with the CPU's, would I be right?
I am starting to think the guy who I got this from had tried messing with it and screwed a few things up in the process.
I even unpluged the hard drive so it would display the folder missing screen, just so i know it wasnt a OS boot issue.
Dont even know if there is anything on the Hard Drive, Hoping to do a clean install anyways.
Click to expand...
Yeah, it sounds like that card was probably flashed for a Quicksilver G4 and it's giving you the trouble I describe. He probably upgraded, wanted the card in there, thought it would work and when it didn't, abandoned the whole thing and sold it.
 
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Been trying to find a card on ebay, cant find the card you recommend, any other card.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_...ermac+g5+.TRS0&_nkw=powermac+g5&_sacat=175673

Like looking for a needle in a hey stack.

Should I try repasting the CPU and seeing if it will work again, altho the smell it gave off, I think its has died.
How can i find out exactly the CPU I have, as i read everywhere they have to match.
 
eyoungren said:
That 6800 card looks a lot like the one I have/had in my Quicksilver G4.

As I understood it, it only functioned in the Quicksilver and was problematic in any other Mac. If this truly was a flashed card that was perhaps pulled from a QS G4 this might explain the issues with it here.

Western Digital drives are my go to drive. Good quality and because WD allows it you can jumper down modern SATA III drives to work in a G5.

I currently have a 4TB WD Enterprise drive as my secondary drive on my Quad with a 1TB Black as my primary drive. The Enterprise drive had to be jumpered down before the G5 would see it. My recommendation would be either a 1 or 2TB Black or Blue drive (whatever is cheapest) as a boot drive with as large a capacity WD secondary drive you can get.

The Enterprise drives tend to be dependable and reliable. They are designed for servers. But as large capacity drives you aren't going to be able to boot off them, which is why I recommend the Blue or Black for booting.

I do not recommend WD Red drives, particulary the 5400rpm drives. Unless you intend to turn your G5 into some sort of NAS that will have constant read/writes these are really not the type of drive for regular computing. They are designed for heavy I/O. I also do not recommend WD Green drives except if you intend them to be used as a storage drive (in which case the Enterprise model would be better). I have a Green drive (in a USB dock) and it's never been fast. Enterprise drives are more storage oriented but they are not slow like the Greens. Greens are designed to use as little power as possible and remain as cool as possible so that's why they tend to be slow.

Back to the GPU. If you could get a Radeon FireGL X3, one flashed to work on Mac that would probably be a very good option. It's a workstation video card, you can get them flashed on eBay for about $50 and they are pretty powerful - certainly more powerful than the 6800.

I have a 2.7 DP G5 that will eventually be receiving my FireGL.
Click to expand...


the GeForce 6800 GT only has issues inside of PowerMac G4 MDDs (and although no one has tested this I suspect it would play funny buggers in an Xserve G4 too) it works fine in any other Mac with a 4x or higher AGP Slot. (im not sure where you got the information that it only works in a quicksilver?) especially as the ROM for the Card is derived from the GeForce 6800 GT DDL used in the PowerMac G5...

the fact his card gives no picture means its not been flashed in the first place or there is something wrong with the G5.

based on the condition of this G5 I recommend picking up a Cheap known Good G5 card to test the machine something like https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/273009206788

before splashing out for the expensive options.
 
lonewolf12016 said:
Been trying to find a card on ebay, cant find the card you recommend, any other card.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_...ermac+g5+.TRS0&_nkw=powermac+g5&_sacat=175673

Like looking for a needle in a hey stack.

Should I try repasting the CPU and seeing if it will work again, altho the smell it gave off, I think its has died.
How can i find out exactly the CPU I have, as i read everywhere they have to match.
Click to expand...

The ATI 9600 would be the stock standard card for your G5. The 9650 would be a minor upgrade on this;

https://m.ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_trksid=m4084.l1313&_nkw=mac+graphics+card+agp

As @LightBulbFun recommends, you could go for the FX 5200 as the cheapest option to test everything works. Either way, these cards will hold their value (or go up as they become rarer).

My understanding with the CPU is that you can just match the revision and speed. I just did a look up of your G5 and it is the first gen 7,2 model, not the 7,3.

CPUs for your G5 are listed here with part numbers:

https://www.thebookyard.com/?cPath=92_91_55_63_208&sort=2a&filter_id=12

It seems they have a V1 and a V2 option. @LightBulbFun is there a way to figure out which is currently installed just by looking at it?

I had a G5 which failed to boot with a GPU Installed, so I booted from it’s HDD via Firewire Target Disk Mode (via another Mac) and switched on Screen Sharing, shut down and then rebooted it with the GPU removed. I was then able to log into it from another Mac over VNC/Screen Sharing. This might be an idea to see if it is booting up to the desktop sans-graphics.
 
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The is a Part Number on the CPU board 630-4954 also else where there is in white V1, next to the connector.
This doesnt seem to match up with any of the CPU's from that site, I am going to take the other CPU out and see if it matches this one.
 
I see the upside down “V1” now. It would be a relatively safe bet to buy the V1 CPU from the bookyard (or similar site). They should offer a return policy if the part is wrong. Although, chances are good the CPUs will work together.

Apple had a relatively long run with the 2.0Ghz 970 CPU from 2003 (where the dual 2.0 was the top spec) and early 2005 (lowest spec). The first gen PowerMac7,2 model identifier also made a come back with the early 2005 model (last of the single core MP’s). This last model was a 970fx, whether that means parts are interchangeable, I don’t know... Maybe someone with both a 7,2 ‘03 and a 7,2 ‘05 could try putting the fx CPU’s in the earlier model to confirm. The fx had improvements on power efficiency over the original, but from my understanding, it was the same in terms of performance.
 
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AphoticD said:
I see the upside down “V1” now. It would be a relatively safe bet to buy the V1 CPU from the bookyard (or similar site). They should offer a return policy if the part is wrong. Although, chances are good the CPUs will work together.

Apple had a relatively long run with the 2.0Ghz 970 CPU from 2003 (where the dual 2.0 was the top spec) and early 2005 (lowest spec). The first gen PowerMac7,2 model identifier also made a come back with the early 2005 model (last of the single core MP’s). This last model was a 970fx, whether that means parts are interchangeable, I don’t know... Maybe someone with both a 7,2 ‘03 and a 7,2 ‘05 could try putting the fx CPU’s in the earlier model to confirm. The fx had improvements on power efficiency over the original, but from my understanding, it was the same in terms of performance.
Click to expand...

All the Early 2005 models use the 970FX and PowerMac 7,3 Model identifier from what i have seen

I have seen a few 2004 PowerMac7,3s with regular 970s in them (my 2.0 is one such mac). and IIRC you can swap the 970 regulars from those into a 7,2 but dont hold me to it (I think one member here has done such a swap)
 
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Got a replacement GPU, and to find out the HHD was totally dead, took a closer look to find out the guy took it apart, why I have no idea, ordered a replacement from thebookyard, currrently put in a HHD I had laying around for now.
Got leopard installed, the version I burnt off to disc failed to install, so had to basically restore a dmg to another hhd, use that as a install disk.
It worked fine, abit of a pain but it worked.
I burnt off a copy of ASD. Ran a Thermal Calibration on the single CPU, completed it fine.
Also Ran a test on the system, passed with flying colours.
So currently have a fully working G5.
Just need to get another CPU to get it back to 2, also thinking of upgrading the RAM, currently has 8x 256mb Ram
So Max it out to the 8gig of ram it can take. Might upgrade the GPU now I know the system is working fine.
The one I bought was £15 on ebay, only has 32mb VRAM lol FX5200 if I remember right.
Need to find a decent web browers, as safari wont even load googles web page, just hangs but i was expecting that.
For my first actual tear down and fix a vintage Mac, its going pretty well.

Picture 1.png Picture 2.png Picture 3.png
 
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lonewolf12016 said:
Need to find a decent web browers, as safari wont even load googles web page, just hangs but i was expecting that.
Click to expand...

That's not normal - have you run Software Update to get the last version? Once you have, you could then get Leopard Webkit which is an updated iteration of Safari. Roccat is also current, although it can be crashy. If you sacrifice a little speed TenFourFox is best alround for compatibility and security.
 
I rn software update after installing Leopard and its all uptodate, I tried Webkit, still the same result, it won't load any page just hangs.
I installed TenFourFox and that works like a charm, abit slow but hey its running a single core CPU, what more can I expect really.
 
lonewolf12016 said:
I rn software update after installing Leopard and its all uptodate, I tried Webkit, still the same result, it won't load any page just hangs.
I installed TenFourFox and that works like a charm, abit slow but hey its running a single core CPU, what more can I expect really.
Click to expand...

Might be something amiss somewhere...your GPU is reporting strange too - that's normally a 64Mb card and you've got the translucent menu bar - not normally possible with a FX5200.
 
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lonewolf12016 said:
I rn software update after installing Leopard and its all uptodate, I tried Webkit, still the same result, it won't load any page just hangs.
I installed TenFourFox and that works like a charm, abit slow but hey its running a single core CPU, what more can I expect really.
Click to expand...

When you installed Leopard WebKit, did you run the script for updating your system’s certificates? The scripts are on the install dmg and will run in Terminal when you double click them. Also run the script to disable ipv6 on all interfaces. This should allow both the standard version of Safari and Leopard WebKit to connect to google.com, apple.com etc
 
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Dronecatcher said:
Does that mean you've installed the new Webkit system wide? In the past, that's caused problems for me.
Regarding Safari, even version 4.1.3 (with Tiger Webkit) on my G3 iBook loads Google and browses fine.
Click to expand...

I found switching off IPv6 helped in cases where loading google.com would stall, but saying that it hasn’t been a consistent requirement. Not all of my Macs have had a problem. Maybe it’s something to do with the modem/router or specific hardware.

To confirm, I just pulled up Safari 4.1.3 (Tiger) on my PB17” (no version of WebKit is installed) and entered google.com, it just stalled until it timed out. I quit Safari, switched off ipv6 (Airport) and restarted Safari, google popped up instantly.
 
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AphoticD said:
I quit Safari, switched off ipv6 (Airport) and restarted Safari, google popped up instantly.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a fix :) I've never used the ipv6 script - turning it off in Network prefs has long become a post install muscle memory action ;)
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pochopsp said:
that is normal indeed, because he installed the Leopard Rebirth theme, which provides a translucent menu bar even on low end GPUs
Click to expand...

Ah, I didn't know that - I don't use any theme mods.
 
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