PowerMac G5 being a trouble child. Help?

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Hello! I was recently given a PowerMac G5 under the circumstances that it was broken and needed some work.

Plugging the machine in was normal, the fans span up (not turbo jet mode like they do when it's kaput) the LED turned on and it made the start-up chime. However. No video.

I did all the standard stuff, reset the PRAM, reset the PMU. change the PRAM battery. and not much changed.

The machine did once spring into life in open firmware mode oddly, and a second time it came on with the question mark folder (as the hard drive is blank). but most of the time has no life at all.

Any ideas?

Thanks

Steve.
 
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Location
Blue Mountains NSW Australia
Your Mac's Specs
Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
G'day and welcome to the forums.

First two suggestions dodgy gfx card and/or failed hard drive. Open her up, make sure the plastic deflector is in position as it will not boot without that, remove the card, clean it and reseat it firmly back into place and try again. If no joy the try installing an operating system on the drive. Bot from aq Tiger or Leopard retail DVD and see if the drive appears in Disk utility. If any joy format, into partition and select one single, into Options and select Apple Partition Map, back to installer and see what happens.


There are many, many models of G5 PowerMacs so it is impossible to recommend a gfx card if it has failed. They came in PCI - PCI-X and PCI-E versions.
 

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