iMac G4 startup issue

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blackscooby

Guest
Aaagghhhrrrrrrr
Installed the latest patches (10.3.7) and the mac has been running sucessfully for a few days now running web server to my website.

Looked at the screen today and it said that it had encountered an error and needed to be powered off / restarted.

Powered it off by holding in the power button as recommended. Now it will not boot. NOTHING !

The white LED shows on the screen, the system makes the startup sound and thats it. Screen stays black :black:

Not good.

Any ideas as I'm stuck.

Thanks

Mark
 
Joined
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Location
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Your Mac's Specs
PowerMac G4 Cube 450mhz 832mb
have you tried starting up while holding down shift on the keyboard? have you recently installed any new hardware or software?
 
OP
B

blackscooby

Guest
Wow you're up early !
Anyways, I seem to have sorted it. Left it turned off for a while, disconnected everything except the keyboard. Tried to boot whilst holding down shift and it failed again.
Found my test hardware CD and took it to the MAC...... Booted fine.

Would appear that the threat of testing the hardware has scared it into booting. Just running repair file permissions now. Once that is complete I'll run MacJanitor and clean the logs etc.

Once that is complete I'll run the hardware test utility.

Bit scary as I've turned from a Windows box person, to a Mac. I've said how good they are at work and a couple of my colleuges are looking into getting a 2nd hand iMac as well.

Shame its just let me down !

Will report back in a bit.

Cheers
 
Joined
Oct 30, 2004
Messages
4,374
Reaction score
55
Points
48
Location
San Antonio, Texas
Your Mac's Specs
PowerMac G4 Cube 450mhz 832mb
Ill be leaving for the dat soon, but Ill be back later today, and Ill check back before I leave.
 
OP
B

blackscooby

Guest
Just checked the logs and it reported a "graphics chip error".

Just as I quit the logs, bloody thing reported another error and required a restart.
Booo hooo
 
OP
B

blackscooby

Guest
Using Hardware test it find the following error.
Video ram
disp/13/2

Its a Nvidia GeForce2 MX.

Bugger.... Any recommendations ?
 
OP
B

blackscooby

Guest
Bit of an update....

I bought this iMac from an E-bay seller back in October. It has run flawlessly since then until this morning. I checked the e-bay posting and saw that the seller had said that the board was replaced, so I wrote to the seller.

Turns out that the board was replaced at the end of August 04, so hopefully I can get the board replaced as it would be guarenteed for 12 months hopefully.

She had sent me documents showing the board replacement, invoices etc and it was performed at an Authorised Mac vendor.

Going to phone them on Monday and see what I can sort out. The only issue is that the Apple Dealer where the work was performed was at the other end of the country....
 
OP
B

blackscooby

Guest
Phoned the Apple dealer last week and the logic board was out of warrenty ~ it was replaced at the end of August 2004.

Since then I've reformatted the disk and started from scratch again. I'm now running 10.2.8 and I've had no problems what-so-ever since. VERY strange.

The iMac hasn't frozen once and it's had some extensive use over the last few days, including iTunes running full screen visulizer for hours on end. (This was a guarenteed way to make it fail in minutes!)

The next test will be to update to 10.3.x and see if the fault re-occurs. If it does it will be a bind to re-format again and regress to 10.2.x as it took me hours to get it back to the state it's in now !!!!

Merry Christmas

Mark
 

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