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I did search for this and turned up no relevant hits, so newbie or not (and historically a PC-type person) I'll post my experience in hope of saving someone else some time and perhaps a computer.
Mac G4 from the 'recycle' shed at our local dump site. Bought a keyboard and mouse (we didn't have any with USB connections), plugged it in and it worked fine, but Internet Connect reported 'no dial tone.'
Bought it an Air Port card; that too worked fine. But we need dial-up as a backup capability. I bought it a replacement (used) internal modem ... still no dial tone.
???
A couple more hours troubleshooting (I do this stuff for fun ...) disclosed that right inside where the phone line jack is, there is a metal box about the size of my thumb containing a circuit board with around 15 parts. Most of them are a filter, probably to keep electrical noise from the computer being dumped on the phone line. One however is a fuse -- about 1/8" long by half that width. That fuse was blown on my machine and there was a dark stain nearby on the circuit board showing where an arc had formed. Most likely a nearby lightning hit.
This fuse is a soldered-on part: You'd have to be a better repairman than I am to want to change it, and that's AFTER you find a new one. The board is replaceable as an assembly but it would be a mess to do properly since the wire to the internal modem is part of the filter board and runs diagonally across the motherboard and underneath it. Start by removing the MB ...
Yeah there are guys who do that. I'm not one of them.
I jumpered the fuse with a bit of #34 wire. This probably doesn't protect the modem adequately but since dial up is a backup capability it won't often be plugged in and I'll put a surge suppressor on the phone line.
When you can't find a software reason for no dial tone a trip to a computer repairman ought to identify this problem rather quickly. Just a continuity check from the phone jack on the back to each of the pins on the ittybitty flat plug that goes into the internal modem card. I think only the yellow and green wires -- anyway, the two center pins on the phone jack -- matter.
I didn't yet swap the original modem back in to see if it survived the zap. It did function to the point of informing me that there was no dial tone.
I have to say that the dial up capability on the G4 works very well: Even on web pages it's not that much slower than our cell phone-type broadband.
The blown dialup capability was probably the reason that this machine showed up at the dump. I s'pose I could call the prior owner to complain about the missing keyboard and mouse, not to mention the manual, and CDs ... but maybe not.
My wife refers to the dump as my favorite store. Hummm ... Anyway, I could definitely become an Apple person.
Mac G4 from the 'recycle' shed at our local dump site. Bought a keyboard and mouse (we didn't have any with USB connections), plugged it in and it worked fine, but Internet Connect reported 'no dial tone.'
Bought it an Air Port card; that too worked fine. But we need dial-up as a backup capability. I bought it a replacement (used) internal modem ... still no dial tone.
???
A couple more hours troubleshooting (I do this stuff for fun ...) disclosed that right inside where the phone line jack is, there is a metal box about the size of my thumb containing a circuit board with around 15 parts. Most of them are a filter, probably to keep electrical noise from the computer being dumped on the phone line. One however is a fuse -- about 1/8" long by half that width. That fuse was blown on my machine and there was a dark stain nearby on the circuit board showing where an arc had formed. Most likely a nearby lightning hit.
This fuse is a soldered-on part: You'd have to be a better repairman than I am to want to change it, and that's AFTER you find a new one. The board is replaceable as an assembly but it would be a mess to do properly since the wire to the internal modem is part of the filter board and runs diagonally across the motherboard and underneath it. Start by removing the MB ...
Yeah there are guys who do that. I'm not one of them.
I jumpered the fuse with a bit of #34 wire. This probably doesn't protect the modem adequately but since dial up is a backup capability it won't often be plugged in and I'll put a surge suppressor on the phone line.
When you can't find a software reason for no dial tone a trip to a computer repairman ought to identify this problem rather quickly. Just a continuity check from the phone jack on the back to each of the pins on the ittybitty flat plug that goes into the internal modem card. I think only the yellow and green wires -- anyway, the two center pins on the phone jack -- matter.
I didn't yet swap the original modem back in to see if it survived the zap. It did function to the point of informing me that there was no dial tone.
I have to say that the dial up capability on the G4 works very well: Even on web pages it's not that much slower than our cell phone-type broadband.
The blown dialup capability was probably the reason that this machine showed up at the dump. I s'pose I could call the prior owner to complain about the missing keyboard and mouse, not to mention the manual, and CDs ... but maybe not.
My wife refers to the dump as my favorite store. Hummm ... Anyway, I could definitely become an Apple person.
