G4 - Monitor shuts down on boot

I have a G4 dual processor, 433 MHz with a Samsung SyncMaster 743 DF monitor. (The monitor works fine with my PC and worked with the Mac for several years.) When I boot up, there is no display . I booted up tonight and after a few minutes the monitor suddenly came on. I rebooted so that I could turn my CD-RW on and pull everything on my hard drive off. . .now, nothing, no monitor and no keyboard. However, my wacom tablet light is also blinkink along with the monitor light but the mouse, which is pluged into the keyboard is lit. Any quesses, even wild ones, are welcome. Even if the computer can't be rescued, I'd sure like to pull some stuff off the HD. Can a Mac be slaved to another so that I can do that?

Loon,

I'm a PC/applications tech but just joined this board in order to help support a close friend who has great difficulty getting support (for under $125/hr :>) on simple Mac related issues. So, the Mac world is still foreign to me and this one is a guess.

You should check/replace your PRAM (parameter RAM) battery. It's a 3.6V/850mAh 1/2 AA Li Standard Terminal battery. That battery supplies power to your monitor, clock, ports, etc. You should be able to pick one up for about $5- at Mac supply houses. You might even try a local supplier (eg, Radio Shack).

If that doesn't do it, you may also want to reset - or what I think you folks call "zap" -the PRAM settings to default. Because I live outside your world I don't know how that's done, or if instructions vary by OS, but you can probably find instructions easily in a web search.

I believe the PRAM can be corrupted by the OS itself, and the battery can be drained by shutting of power via a power strip, so keep the PRAM in mind if your peripherals get flaky in the future.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Interesting problem. In a worse case scenerio I'd buy some software for your windows box that can read mac drives and place the drives into your pc. You can find a couple of these via VersionTracker. Enter "Mac format" for Windows software.

Check that all the cables are plugged in. Check that the ram, video card and other PCI cards are all plugged in well. I've actually had one of these problems before.

Can you hear if the mac is turning on? If not then check that the power supply connector to the motherboard is still sitting well. If it does turn on, then listen to the beeps/tones. The Apple site has information on those for you computer.

Check the Apple support site and search for your problem. There may be leads there.

BTW, if your CD-RW is in a Firewire or USB case, then you should't have to shutdown the system. Just turn on drive. If it is SCSI, then I see why you turned off the system.

Fleener had some good suggestions too. That information can be found at Apple too.

Good luck.

Fleener said:

Loon,

I'm a PC/applications tech but just joined this board in order to help support a close friend who has great difficulty getting support (for under $125/hr :>) on simple Mac related issues. So, the Mac world is still foreign to me and this one is a guess.

You should check/replace your PRAM (parameter RAM) battery. It's a 3.6V/850mAh 1/2 AA Li Standard Terminal battery. That battery supplies power to your monitor, clock, ports, etc. You should be able to pick one up for about $5- at Mac supply houses. You might even try a local supplier (eg, Radio Shack).

If that doesn't do it, you may also want to reset - or what I think you folks call "zap" -the PRAM settings to default. Because I live outside your world I don't know how that's done, or if instructions vary by OS, but you can probably find instructions easily in a web search.

I believe the PRAM can be corrupted by the OS itself, and the battery can be drained by shutting of power via a power strip, so keep the PRAM in mind if your peripherals get flaky in the future.

Hope this helps. Good luck!

Click to expand...

I agree that it is a pram problem. I would say instead of changing the battery first, do the "zapping" or resetting of the pram first. This can be done by holding down the command+option+P+R when booting up... wait for three start up chimes... then realease and the pram will have been reset. If this works and your monitor starts working again you are good to go, if it does not then check the battery like the quoted above suggest.

If it is not a pram issue I would say that you try to connect the computer using transfer disk mode... hold down the T key while booting up and have another mac pluged into the current mac using a firewire cord. The mac that is having problems will show up on the working macs desktop so you can browse the files as if it was a external hard drive. You can then burn files and folders onto a cd/dvd or exeternal hard drive to back them up. Then I would bring the computer that is not responding to the monitor to the apple store or send it out so they can look into the problem in a deeper matter and most likely fix it or tell you if it can not be fixed.

I hope you can figure out how to fix the problem easliy with out a high cost. Good Luck.

Back on track

Thanks for the responses. Helpful suggestions all which I'll tuck away for future reference. I'm happy to say that a $6 battery has resolved my issue. Dropped it, turned it on and I'm ready to go. A special thanks to Fleener who crossed party lines to come up with the answer without support costs.