No chime, but G5 powers up

A very long story short I have my cousin's old PowerMac Dual 2.0ghz G5 which she has had since 2003. It made a clicking noise and would not power up, so I went ahead and replaced the power supply with a known good one.

Now that I have the new power supply in, the Mac starts up, but there's no chime, and no video output. The white light comes on in the front, all the fans spin up fine, and I can even hold the power button in for a few seconds and it beeps at me. So here's what I've tried so far:

- I removed all the memory and put just the stock 512mb (2x256mb) RAM chips in there. Once that didn't work, I put only the 1g kit Kingston memory in memory bank 1 and still no luck. When I start the PowerMac up with no RAM, the light flashes intermittently, so I'm fairly certain it's not a memory issue

- I've done the SMU/PRAM or whatever it's called reset close to a dozen times by now, a few of them waiting 10 minutes between each step just to make sure my impatience isn't affecting it

- No luck with holding down the OpenBoot or PRAM reset key combination during startup

- All fans, plastics, etc. are back in their place in the case.

- The PRAM battery is good, I took a multimeter to it and have another known good battery available.

So I'm pretty sure that leaves only two logical explanations: either the Video card or Logic board/G5 Processors are bad. Would anyone else have some ideas they'd be willing to share with me? Or is my above hypothesis appear to be correct?

If I leave the system on for a good 10 minutes I can physically feel the heat sinks get warm. Although I don't work with Macs often I've been working with IBM servers and Cisco routers for years, so troubleshooting wacky hardware issues is nothing new for me Thanks for reading this lengthy description!

First up try a PMU or CUDA reset:-

How to reset the SMU on a Power Mac G5 (Late 2004) or Power Mac G5 (Late 2005)

OR THIS:-

Resetting Cuda/PMU on Power Mac G5, Power Mac G4, Power Macintosh G3

I would hazard a good guess that the problem may just be the HD. They often make clicking noises when dying/dead. The are some logic board failures I've heard of with G5's too.
Do you have access to another Mac? I would suggest running it in Target Disk mode, to see what you can find on the G5.

Hi Zombi1:
I see theis is an older thread, but I have an old G5 that's been doing the same thing. I was wondering if you've fixed yours.
Mine started doing this a long time ago. The first thing it did was not have any video. I can see it still boots up and I can open the CD dor with the eject botton, and shut down with CNTL-OPT-COMMAND-Eject. If I let it stay on - with no video - for a while, maybe 10 minutes, then shutdown and restart, it would work! I later changed the video card, that made little difference. Sometimes I would just leave it on for weeks, using it, without shutting it down, and it was fine. I tried sleeping that worked sometimes. Sometime when I awake it, the screen would light, but be full of artifacts. I can see something moving around whne I move the mouse. The computer would be unstable and lock up. I would need to hang on the power to shut it down. Recently, warming it up isn't working. I let it sit on - dead screen - all night, and in the morning a restart still doesn't help. Just yesterday I thought I'd hook up an ordinary monitor to the DV port on the video card. This doesn't work either. I notice there is no chime either. After a few more PRam resets, the chime came back. Actually, it might have been the pulling of the battery that got the chime back, but still no video. I might try the other button inside again to see what happens, but I have little faith.
Let me know if you've found something with yours. This has to be a common problem.
HArry
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Zombi 1....A Bad HD or video card. Reseat the video card and unplug the HD and see if you get the flashing ?

Hi Zombi1:
I bought it to work today and put the supply on a scope to check for ripple (I soldered-in some leads on +12, +5, and +3.3 and they come out the back). The supply looks very clean, to my supprise. I only have the VGA monitor on the stock video card, and that's not even waking up. I've been starting and stopping a dozen or so times. I was watching the 24V on the DV port of the video card. This is hot all the time. It didn't even flicker when I turned it on. But then, the monitor came on! It's working! I jumped into the console and saved the whole log onto a USB thumb-drive. I went into the (about this mac) to look at how much memory was reported. It tells me J11 and J12 are empty (I have this thing loaded with 8 1gig sticks). So, I pull those two sticks. These are the inner two on the two banks. Start up, now it says I'm missing 4. J13 and J14 are also reported missing (the first 2 gigs?). I move the sticks in 13 and 14 to 11 and 12. No display. I can still hear that everything is booting up with the hard drive. I move those two sticks back to 13 and 14, press the reset button on the board, and the screen comes back and it says I have 6 gigs! Only the 11 and 12 that are in fact not in now, are reported 'not installed'. I have, in the past (maybe a year ago) arbitrarily looked at this (about this mac) and seen J11 and J12 as being empty. A restart bought them back. There is something very goofy going on with the memory manager or something. I don't even have the CMOS battery in now, so the date is always coming up 1969, but even though I read 3.6V on the battery, I might put a little load-test on it. I'm also leaving the first two mem-sticks out of J11 and J12. The chime sounds cleaner without them for some reason. Something going on there. I'll keep you posted.
Harry

New mother board, same thing, and more.

Hi Folks:
For those following this thread, I've gotten another moher board (used) and swapped it out. The first thing, the fans really whine! It starts normally when I first hit the power switch, a little wind-up like starting a car, then the speed is slow. Just before the display lights, the fans come on full blast, for about 5 seconds. The display lights, it starts booting then I guess it's the CPU fans that slow down and the speaker-fan speeds up. Then the CPU fans come up to about half-speed I guess (still pretty loud).
I couldn't initially get the Apple Harware Test to work. I had a lock symbol instead of the bootable devices when I started with the Option key. Thanks to the 'ol internet, I read something about EFI password (I think it's called). So, I pulled a couple of memory sticks (had to change the memory size), restarted, and held OPT-CMD-P-R for three extra chimes (or what should have been chimes). That cleared the password. For a while after this, I couldn't get the display to light. Once it did, then when I put the Apple disc in and rebooted, it didn't light. Juggling RAM seemed to make it work. I ran the hardware test, which passed the mother board but failed mass memory. I guess that's the hard drives. Something was clicking that sounded to me like the hard drive was about to quit. I boot into the Apple Disc and ran the drive utility. It found minor header issues which it fixed. This fixed the "long time shutting down" problem that developed last week, but didn't stop the noise. The noise I found was caused by the fan on the exhaust side of the CPU's. My Airport antenna coax was stuck through the grill and into the blades. The fan was retrying to start every couple of seconds. Duh.
Anyway, at one point it would boot with the 8 1 gig sticks, and 4 gig were reported empty (the first 2 and last 2). I ended up pulling all but the first 2 and it reports 2 gigs, like it should, and boots, but the fans still wind.
I read there is some kind of Apple disc that calibrates the fans. I wonder were these calibration 'numbers/variables' go. I suspect if I can extract these numbers out of the old motherboard, and put them in this one, it would be fine. However, there are memory issues with both these boards and the issues are almost identicle. It seems to point to the memory sticks themselves, but juggling them around does make changes. I suspect the memory sockets. Curious how the contacts on the memory sticks have no marks that indicate some metal-to-metal sliding.
Harry

OK. Now I'm back to the original mother board. The fans are nice and quiet. Hardware test fails the CPU temperature. This passed on the other mother board. I had to juggle ram to get the video to work. Out of my 8 gigs of 1 gig chips (all identicle), I found four that give me video. I kept one in, and went through the others one at a time. Three give me no video, and one blinks the light on the monitor three times. These worked before, but it sure seems like the ram is failing. I put the 4 that work back in, I have video and 4 gigs reported.
I read a post about these ram that NEED to be CL3. I guess that's 400mHz. Anything faster will cause problems, but maybe if the faster ram had the small chip (8 pin bugger) on the DIMM programmed to report CL3, it will work.
I don't know... Let's see how this lasts..
Thanks folks for the pointers.
Harry

Not quite right

The display is working, but the chime is gone when I start up. I don't know what that can mean. I ran Norton Utilities all night defraging the hard drive and fixing errors. It made it through the night. A thing about Norton Utilities: I had this disc for a long time. I don't remember it finding sooo many things wrong with the hard drive. Granted, it tries to fix file dates and icons, also. I had reset the pmu many times. But it finds things wrong with the volume name, boot issues, etc.
Well, anyway, I think these MACs should come with this fan-calibration software. I find it on the internet (ASD 2.5.8) but it looks like every site is a scam site. I guess this will be the last MAC I ever buy, new or used. If almost 40% of these failed in the first year, I guess I got lucky. I got about 4 years before it started acting up. But, right now I'm typing this on a Win 98SE machine that's 8 years old, has never had a hardware problem, and the hard drive was last formatted December 5th, 1999. It's an AUS. Maybe ASUS should make MACs. MAke it work reliably instead of sitting pretty.
Just to vent, I've had a few crappy PCs too.

Me again. I let it sit a couple of days. Now, no video again. Juggling memory doesn't seem to help. Swapping video cards doesn't help. Letting it idel fro 10 minutes and restarting didn't help. I can hear it still booting, though, and I can open the CD tray, and shut it down with CMD-OPT-CNTL-EJECT. I guess the Mother Board is frying memory. Maybe I'll put some resistor in series with the fans and put this other Mother Board in. I can't use it when it's this loud.

Pain-in-the-*** again. I put the newer MB in, juggled memory which didn't help, hit the PMU reset a couple of times and got the display up! The fans going crazy. I downloaded all the ASD 2.5.8 stuff and burnt a CD. I ran the fan calibration and a load of test that took at least an hour. I didn't go crazy on the RAM, but it passed the walking 1's and 0's. Now, after the reset, the fans are nice and quiet! Strange that the calibration didn't seem to drive them up and down, but it seemed to fix it!
Still, I have no faith on this memory. I still get no chime. After a PR reset, I get the chime once.

Ok. My last post for a while, I hope. I let this computer run for two days without turning it off. I restarted it, and the chime is back! And, the video still works! So, that's like new I think! Looks like ebay Logic Board was a good buy!

Dual G5 video - Same guy and same Mac.

Folks: It's been a while. I still have the same hardware. I've had the Mac on for about 2 months, without turning it off, and it's been fine. We had some storms, and the power was off for 5 hours. When it came back, the Mac didn't. I let it sit on, with nothing on the display, for a day and restarted, but still no video. I can hear it chime, boot, I can open the DVD drive, etc., but no video. I took it to work and put an ordinary VGA monitor on. No video. Here's the fun part:
I pulled the power supply out, took it apart, located three potentiometers with glue on them. I pulled the glue off, powered-up the supply by jumping the green(?) wire I think to ground. I found one POT controls the voltages of 5 and twelve. Another pot changes the 24V, which is always on, and the remaining POT seems to do nothing. I though I should be able to adjust the 3.3V. Anyway, I drilled holes in the cover so I could adjust these when buttoned-up and in the computer. I cranked the 5V up to 5.20. (this trims the 12V, too). After a few MB button presses, the monitor comes on! It's working!
I bring it home, put it on the Apple 20" (DVI) screen (it uses that 24V). It worked for about 10 seconds of the boot, then characters (garbage) scrolled down over the Apple Logo, and it froze like that. Now it looks dead. Just a chime. Back with the VGA monitor, chime but no video or boot. Fiddling with the 5V supply, I tweaked it down to about 4.9V. Powered it up, nothing, PMU button a few times, it comes up! Chime and Video on VGA. I restarted it a few times and it's OK! Just curious, I fiddled with the 5V while playing a video. I could crank that 5V supply down to 4.53V before the computer froze. So, I cut the difference in half and set the supply to 4.7V. It started with the cinema display while cold today. I played a 2 hour DVD, no problems, even on the Apple Cinema display.

Gotta win this month's persistence award hands down!

Hahah! Thanks Buddy. I do love this computer when it works. BTW, I forgot to mention. I'm not sure if this helped, but I took the clip off the video card. The video card goes in the slot a couple more MM. I tried bending the top of the clip, the 'L' end up, but it still didn't go down. The widening of the bottom of the clip keeps the card out of the slot a bit. I guess this really means the PCB is too LOW in the case, but many other things, like the rear connectors, wouldn't line-up if I boosted the board. I guess I need a custom clip. Anyway, computer is working fine with 4.7V 5 volt supply.
TY and I hope this encourages people.
Harry

HarryHydro said:

Folks: It's been a while. I still have the same hardware. I've had the Mac on for about 2 months, without turning it off, and it's been fine. We had some storms, and the power was off for 5 hours. When it came back, the Mac didn't. I let it sit on, with nothing on the display, for a day and restarted, but still no video. I can hear it chime, boot, I can open the DVD drive, etc., but no video. I took it to work and put an ordinary VGA monitor on. No video. Here's the fun part:
I pulled the power supply out, took it apart, located three potentiometers with glue on them. I pulled the glue off, powered-up the supply by jumping the green(?) wire I think to ground. I found one POT controls the voltages of 5 and twelve. Another pot changes the 24V, which is always on, and the remaining POT seems to do nothing. I though I should be able to adjust the 3.3V. Anyway, I drilled holes in the cover so I could adjust these when buttoned-up and in the computer. I cranked the 5V up to 5.20. (this trims the 12V, too). After a few MB button presses, the monitor comes on! It's working!
I bring it home, put it on the Apple 20" (DVI) screen (it uses that 24V). It worked for about 10 seconds of the boot, then characters (garbage) scrolled down over the Apple Logo, and it froze like that. Now it looks dead. Just a chime. Back with the VGA monitor, chime but no video or boot. Fiddling with the 5V supply, I tweaked it down to about 4.9V. Powered it up, nothing, PMU button a few times, it comes up! Chime and Video on VGA. I restarted it a few times and it's OK! Just curious, I fiddled with the 5V while playing a video. I could crank that 5V supply down to 4.53V before the computer froze. So, I cut the difference in half and set the supply to 4.7V. It started with the cinema display while cold today. I played a 2 hour DVD, no problems, even on the Apple Cinema display.

Click to expand...

I'm going to ask a rather stupid question here, but, did you tell Mac OS X to automatically restart after a power failure?

glad to hear you are getting to grips with this ;D

my G5 can be a bit hit & miss with the Ram & slots but its been OK for a while!

G5 PPC No Boot, No Video, No Chime

Hi all

My issue is now resolved, but during my searches for causes I found it's a rare thing for people to actually post info once they get the result!

My Dual 2.5GHz PPC recently froze. I had to force shut down. On power-up, I got no chime, no video, but the fans began to spin.

I removed and reseated all PCI and RAM reset the NVU on logic board, and tried again. This time same symptoms, but now white LED only lit when depressed.

After stripping the board down, cleaning and rebuilding, I was still no better off.

As a last test, I removed the PRAM battery for 10 minutes with computer unplugged to discharge the PSU. Although the battery tested fine at 6.6V, I found that upon reseating it after the 10mins, my iussue disappeared.

My G5 now boots as normal, and although I had to reset date & time, all symptoms are gone.

It may not help everyone, but as the PRAM battery can not just control date/time, but also affect power management in some cases, this is worth a try before you splash out on a new logic board.