Power Mac G4 (mirrored drive 8570) Won't Power On

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Oct 7, 2008
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Hi there,
A few months ago I installed Leopard on my g4 tower and since then I've been having power problems. I realized I plugged the wrong power cord in when I set everything back up, so I figured that was the problem, thinking it was an issue of not drawing enough power; however, the problem has persisted. It used to be that I'd have to press the power button a couple of times for it to really take, then it was taking longer and longer to make that happen. Now it just won't power on at all.
I recently posted this issue elsewhere asking for advice on how to find the PMU button. Thanks to two very helpful replies I was able to locate it and reset it. Unfortunately, that didn't fix the problem. One post I saw suggested we take the battery out and unplug everything and put it all back together after at least ten minutes. That didn't work either. Is there anything else we can try before shelling out for a new battery when we don't even know if the battery is the problem? Any diagnostic advice would be great! Thanks!!
 
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May 18, 2008
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Amberley, Canterbury, New Zealand
Your Mac's Specs
MacMini 14.3, 8.1 & 4.1, OS 13.5, 10.14, & 10.11 & 10.6; Macbook Pro 8.2, OS 10.12.
How about testing the present battery first? Take it out and test it with a multimeter. If you know a friendly registered electrician, that would be best, because he would have a meter which measures higher amp readings than the diy-type multimeter. A battery will often give the correct voltage reading (ie. 3.6 v) but that can be misleading. It's how much current that voltage is pushing that matters.
If it's not a battery problem, the next port-of-call is the power supply unit, which can also be tested with a multimeter by someone qualified to do it.
 
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Your Mac's Specs
Mac Mini Core i7 2012 | White 2009 MacBook 2 Ghz | 733 Mhz G4 Quicksilver
TRy hughvane's trick first, my G4 wouldn't power up and a new battery fixed it, and its a fix that doesn't cost much
 
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Blue Mountains NSW Australia
Your Mac's Specs
Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
MDD are notorious for no boot when the pram battery is flat. DO as hughvane suggests, boot with battery out , install new battery and reboot zapping the pram, holding down (together) Option, Alt (the one with the apple on it) P and R following the chime and keep held down until after second chime.

Keep us posted.
 

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