Hello. I have an older G4 desktop (466 mhz) that will not power up anymore; I press the power button: nothing. I have tried replacing the pram battery with no success. I have been advised that it could be the power supply or the logic board, BUT what I really want to know is: will my data (particularly my digital photos from the last few months which are not backed up) be OK on the hard drives (I have some stuff on the original 30GB hard drive as well as another 40GB hard drive installed). Any advice or reassurance would be appreciated. Thanks.
Aloha MacG,
A coworker of mine literally gave me a PowerMac G4 Gigabit Ethernet (2x450MHz PPC) and everything was going well until one day I noticed the same thing you noticed about yours - namely, it was not powered on. I had no other PPC Macs on which to test my drives but after some poking around determined the power supply was finally dead. I went to
Mac Pro to order my power supply. Start with their
power supply page and see if they have what you need. I was scared of the S&H as I'm out here in Hawaii, but it worked out to around $170.00 for everything, so it really wasn't too bad. Of course, I still have the original 16MB video card, so graphics are really not my thing - it's OK for the nieces and nephew, though.
That being said, see if you can bring it in to a computer store, preferably an
Apple Store, to have it checked out before you lay out any cash for a replacement part. As the G4s are getting really long in the tooth, their replacement parts are fewer and farther between, meaning getting higher in price. A replacement video card for mine, if AGP, is around $200! Good luck with your G4 - they are really great machines, aren't they?!?
HawaiiMacAddict