Power Mac G4 MDD M8570

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Your Mac's Specs
PowerMac G4, dual 1ghz, Model M8570 (ebay buy)
Hi people,

got an Power Mac G4 mirror door drive, model number M8570. Got it off ebay described as tested and working. I love the look of those machines and I've always heard how reliable they are so got one off ebay. It starts up ok but crashes after 10 minutes or so. I checked the power supply as described by the apple manual and get zero readings. But yet the thing starts up and appears to be ok. Anyway, to cut a long story short i'd like to know any ideas on what could be causing this. I'm no apple expert but am becoming one with each passing day. i'm using the hard drive off my old emac, the spec for the Power Mac states it takes an ultra ATA drive? is mine an ultra? no idea. Could that be the problem? Tonight it ran for almost 3 hours with no issues then the crash. No mouse activity and no keyboard activity, but I was running some streaming video off a website. maybe it does not like it. I'm thinking the machine is not getting enough power to drive the logic board but would like other thoughts and experiences please.

Thanks:)
 
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MacMini 14.3, 8.1 & 4.1, OS 13.5, 10.14, & 10.11 & 10.6; Macbook Pro 8.2, OS 10.12.
No, I doubt the HD from the eMac is the problem, nor is the power supply a likely culprit. The logic board may be faulty, but I'd start with the RAM. There may be insufficient RAM, or the seller may have put cheap PC RAM into the machine. Your G4 MDD will take up to 2 GB of low density Mac-compatible RAM.

Get a little utility called Memtest OS X and give it a run. Then get Mactracker and check every spec for that G4 MDD.

Keep us posted on developments, and tell us your full Mac specs. In your profile is best.
 
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Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
And open her up and do a thorough clean out as dust is the enemy of Wind Tunnel's, the colloquial name for MDD models. Pay attention in particular to the inlet near the front leg, and the front fan. If you do a Google there are many items of dudt cuadsing heating and shut down problems.
 
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T
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Hi Guys,

Thanks for the advice. Gave it a good clean as soon as it arrived. Full of fluff it was. I'll follow your advices when I get home tonight. I've got a couple of days to check it over again before I make a decision to keep or return so i'll keep you posted.
 
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T
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PowerMac G4, dual 1ghz, Model M8570 (ebay buy)
Hi brothers, well used my common senses and took the machine apart. Thought for a bit removed the heatsink gave the processor a gentle press down. But more importantly I changed from slots J20 and J23 to J21 and J22 and i'm now writing this message from the machine that was crashing every ten minutes but has run now for over twelve hours over the past three days with no crashes. I've tried all the heavy programs, converting huge video clips (over 1GB files) and playing games. Still more tests to do, check the firewire ports and install the second drive. We'll see what happens.
 

dtravis7


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MacMini M-1 MacOS Monterey, iMac 2010 27"Quad I7 , MBPLate2011, iPad Pro10.5", iPhoneSE
That is great. It really sounded like a RAM issue. I had a 500Mhz G4 that I gave to a friend wanting to mess with OSX that had that issue. I cleaned the ram slots then all of them worked.

Good going and thanks for coming back and reporting your success! If we can ever help in the future, let us know.
 
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Every thing just need to be reseated...also check the video card is seated. It may be a good idea to repair permissions in the disk utility.
 

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