12-15-2010, 01:47 AM

A friend gave me a G4 MDD that he did not want anymore. When I saw it, it was running, but I heard that it took him about 2 hours to get it to power on. When he gave it to me he said if it did not power up when I got it home pull the plug and wait for 10 minutes. If that does not work then pull the battery and wait for 30 minutes and try it again. If that does not work then hit the pram reset button. I never got it to power up yet and I have had it a week. Do all Mac's have this voodoo ritual that must be done to power them up? There must be something wrong somewhere. I thought the power supply might be bad but he did get it to power up? I Google' d for a picture of the pin-out for the power supply and found that pin 12 is ground and pin 11 is power on. Shorting these pins does nothing, no fans turning in the power supply. On any PC when you short out the ground and power on the supply will turn on. I guess a Mac is different. I have a new 400 watt ATX power supply that I could try but I want to find a way to check the one that is in there now before I go through all that work, remember, he did have it working before I took it home. I have checked all connections and everything is seated. Am I missing anything? Believe me, I have been searching Google all week for an answer and came up with nothing. I found this forum and thought I would give it one last go before I strip it of the memory and drives.

12-15-2010, 04:06 PM

G'day and welcome to the forums.

Sounds like a failed power supply and they sure ain't cheap. Sometimes a dying PS will power up, most times not. When it fails completely it is gone. Have a look at this and if you are technically minded an ATX power supply will do the trick. There are many examples of this, with photos, if you do a Google:-

http://www.applefritter.com/node/23857

12-16-2010, 12:49 AM

Fair dinkum m8. That looks like it might just do the trick. I'll give it a go. Thanks for the help....

12-16-2010, 11:17 PM

When was the last time a new battery was installed.

12-17-2010, 02:04 PM

Originally Posted by Mac SK

When was the last time a new battery was installed.

That I am not sure of that. I did check the battery with a multimeter and it was the correct voltage. I would have thought the battery was only to back up the bios settings like on a PC.

12-18-2010, 07:25 AM

I can personally attest to the importance of a fresh $15 dollar battery! It does some funky things if it isn't fresh! Fresh is good!