Powermac power supply broken ?

[Macmadant]

I'm pretty sure my power supply is suffering from the 'capictor ageing' affect, as last week i installed a new ram dimm, and since then about once or twice a day it has been completely freezing up, no mouse movement, no lock movement and no keyboard input, after taking the ram out it's not froze as of about 5 hours, is it the power supply or bad ram ?
Opinions much appreciated

 

[Roy]

I'm pretty sure my power supply is suffering from the 'capictor ageing' affect, as last week i installed a new ram dimm, and since then about once or twice a day it has been completely freezing up, no mouse movement, no lock movement and no keyboard input, after taking the ram out it's not froze as of about 5 hours, is it the power supply or bad ram ?
Opinions much appreciated

G4 Digital Audio 466 here. About somewhere along upgrading to around OS 10.4.9, I started having similar problems. I never saw anyone else report the problem so I though maybe just an old 7 year old keyboard, mouse, etc. My on screen mouse pointer freezes up several times a day. I just unplug it from the keyboard and plug it back in and it work again just fine--until the next time. Occasionally my keyboard will "play dead" and the keys don't seem to want to work. I have my keyboard plugged into my monitor and I just unplug and replug and it works again. Occasionally, like one time today, unplugging won't work and I just had to restart, but that only happens about once every 2 weeks.

I've thought about buying another mouse and trying it out to see if that is where the problem emanates, but then I might have to buy a keyboard and try that also. My problem just seemed to start on one of the updates.

I also got an intermittent "cricket" sound in one of my speakers about the same time, but that's another story.

 

[Macmadant]

well it hasn't froze since, i guess the new ram dim was drawing more power than could be given at times and that was causing it to freeze, i'm certain it's not bad ram due to it appearing in the system profile and passing the apple hardware test, i guess i'll have to send it back as i'm certainly not gonna buy a new powersupply, although i could do with a way of testing it

 

[GotPro]

Bad ram won't always show up in tests... try replacing the ram with the aftermarket... if it still freezes... it's not your power supply... it is the ram.

It also might not be fully spec'd ram... Apple's are picky about the ram.

Where did you buy it from?

 

[Macmadant]

Bad ram won't always show up in tests... try replacing the ram with the aftermarket... if it still freezes... it's not your power supply... it is the ram.

It also might not be fully spec'd ram... Apple's are picky about the ram.

Where did you buy it from?

Thanks for your help, i brought the ram from crucial, i've already got one dimm of their ram in there, so i don't think it's a compatibility thing

 

[WardC]

Reading about your symptoms...I seriously doubt this problem remotely has anything to do with your Power supply. I had a G4/400 upgraded to a 1GHz chip with the RAM slots completely filled with RAM @ 867MHz, PLUS two video cards (AGP and PCI) and an ethernet card....and the machine handled it just fine.


I also have experience WITH a Power supply problem (major). My first PowerMac was a 9500/120 which I purchased in 1995. In 1996, I was using my machine, when all of a sudden, I heard a loud "pop!" and the machine just died, the screen went black...everything just turned off. After considering everything that could be possibly wrong, I had faith that this was not a blown logic board. I located a power supply for the 9500 (it was about a $300 part back then) and installed it myself (I took the 9500 apart to the motherboard and all the pieces, completely disassembled...and I was 13 years old

Well, good news - it fixed it, and that 9500 faithfully served me for four more years until I upgraded to a B/W G3 tower.

Your power supply will usually not cause crashes, if you stress it too much, it will just burn out and die. I don't think that's happened.

Hope this helped...good luck with further figuring things out. Sounds like either bad RAM, firmware problem, processor problem, cache problem, or something of the sorts. Sometimes the issue is a bus compatibility problem, using the wrong speed of RAM, or using a processor which is not clocked properly to work well with your system bus. This happened on that 9500 of mine when I tried to put a 200MHz 604 card in there, it started freezing up and crashing, left and right. But oddly, I got a NewerTech G3/300 and it worked alot better. When I sold that machine it was running OS 9.1. Oddly, I have had virtually no freezes on any of my machines since Tiger. Just app crashes. (unexpected quits)

Good luck
-Ward

 

[Macmadant]

Reading about your symptoms...I seriously doubt this problem remotely has anything to do with your Power supply. I had a G4/400 upgraded to a 1GHz chip with the RAM slots completely filled with RAM @ 867MHz, PLUS two video cards (AGP and PCI) and an ethernet card....and the machine handled it just fine.


I also have experience WITH a Power supply problem (major). My first PowerMac was a 9500/120 which I purchased in 1995. In 1996, I was using my machine, when all of a sudden, I heard a loud "pop!" and the machine just died, the screen went black...everything just turned off. After considering everything that could be possibly wrong, I had faith that this was not a blown logic board. I located a power supply for the 9500 (it was about a $300 part back then) and installed it myself (I took the 9500 apart to the motherboard and all the pieces, completely disassembled...and I was 13 years old

Well, good news - it fixed it, and that 9500 faithfully served me for four more years until I upgraded to a B/W G3 tower.

Your power supply will usually not cause crashes, if you stress it too much, it will just burn out and die. I don't think that's happened.

Hope this helped...good luck with further figuring things out. Sounds like either bad RAM, firmware problem, processor problem, cache problem, or something of the sorts. Sometimes the issue is a bus compatibility problem, using the wrong speed of RAM, or using a processor which is not clocked properly to work well with your system bus. This happened on that 9500 of mine when I tried to put a 200MHz 604 card in there, it started freezing up and crashing, left and right. But oddly, I got a NewerTech G3/300 and it worked alot better. When I sold that machine it was running OS 9.1. Oddly, I have had virtually no freezes on any of my machines since Tiger. Just app crashes. (unexpected quits)

Good luck
-Ward

Thanks for your help, i figured i'm just going to send the RAM back, it hasn't froze since, so i'm assuming that is the problem, don't know whether i should get a refund or a replacement

 

[TESEV]

well it hasn't froze since, i guess the new ram dim was drawing more power than could be given at times and that was causing it to freeze, i'm certain it's not bad ram due to it appearing in the system profile and passing the apple hardware test, i guess i'll have to send it back as i'm certainly not gonna buy a new powersupply, although i could do with a way of testing it

I have never seen or heard of a power supply causing a computer to freeze (not without the computer getting fried anyway...) so I seriously think the RAM is to blame, especially with the symptoms you are describing. I suggest before you send the RAM back you switch out one of the RAM modules in your machine with the new one and see what happens.

BTW, the Apple Hardware Test is not very thorough so you might want to try something else such as Rember.

More info

 

[Macmadant]

i tried a vareity of configurations and all tests showed the ram to be ok, i've put the new one back in except in the slot that held the original 256 MB the machine came with and the 256 MB in the slot where i previously had the new ram dimm, and as of yet no problems , so i'm baffled as to what was causing the problem

 

[WardC]

i tried a vareity of configurations and all tests showed the ram to be ok, i've put the new one back in except in the slot that held the original 256 MB the machine came with and the 256 MB in the slot where i previously had the new ram dimm, and as of yet no problems , so i'm baffled as to what was causing the problem

Could have been that the RAM was improperly seated. Sometimes lack of proper contact on all the contacts will result in an apparent RAM issue (freezes and such), and just going back and removing the RAM, and properly seating it again will fix it