Continuous Beep at startup

jsnc said:

Not sure if people can recommend businesses or not on the forum, but was wondering if anyone has any recommendations on where to get a legitimate power supply or with a 6 1/2 year machine, am I relegated to what I can find - ebay, etc.

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Sure we can make recommendations.

- Firstly, eBay is actually a very good place for this sort of thing!
- A 2nd place is powerbookmedic.com
- sometimes you can get parts thru ifixit.com. But their Mac Pro area is "pretty weak".
- Do internet searches for Mac used parts places. But some can be VERY over priced.

I would mostly stick with eBay and powerbookmedic.

I'm going to a make a rough guess (this is very rough since I haven't looked recently). But I'm thinking somewhere in the $150 area is what an older Mac Pro power supply will cost. Hopefully I'm wrong…and it's less!

- Nick

p.s. The best way to make sure you get the proper power supply…is to get the part number off your Mac Pro's power supply. Which unfortunately…you have to remove it to get the number. The power supply in in the very bottom of the computer. Lots of stuff to remove to get to it.

If you have a local repair shop or even an apple genius bar, testing a power supply is very easy for them to do. They plug it into a tester (a good tester will put a load on the power supply) and it can read what is going on. Power outages, power surges, low voltage all wear on the power supply. A surge protector only does so much.

Also you could be exceeding the load your power supply can handle. You have changed the video card, and I am assuming, added more hard drives. That all takes power.

I have a PC at work, I had to change the power supply to a 1200 watt because I have a very power hungry video card and four internal hard drives, one dvd burner, a bunch of cooling fans plus some externals that draw power so I wanted to be covered. You should try to only pull 80% of your potential watts from your power supply.

Just some thoughts!
Lisa

jsnc said:

thanks. Is there anyway to definitely answer if the power supply is going?

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Normal is for a defective supply to still boot and run a computer. Then as a supply gets worse, that computer eventually becomes intermittent or troublesome.

That defective supply could have been identified with a digital multimeter (that even sells in hardware stores and Walmart for $5 or $16) before the computer became troublesome.. Labor takes about a minute. And would have identified a defect immediately. Or those numbers make possible assistance from the fewer who really know hardware - without any 'it could be' expressions.

Same applies to a new supply. Just because a computer boots does not say a new PSU is good. And does not say other critical power system components are working properly. Three digit numbers from a meter would define then entire power system without doubt or speculation.

Best way to definitely answer if the power supply is going is one minute of labor and numbers from a digital meter. Best way to confirm the new supply is good and sufficiently sized - same one minute procedure.

BTW power supply testers are inaccurate and unreliable. Those testers only report catastrophic type failures; not a failure that would explain your symptoms. Some shops use testers when their techs do not know how electricity and how various parts of a power system operate. Using a meter (without disconnecting any computer wires) reports far more than any tester could report.

continuous beep on start up

Mine is doing the same thing for several months now - but it finally stops on it own after a few hours of running!
Its incredibly irritating and it sounds as if it is trying to the communicate with a "morse code like signal" for a few minutes as it is booting, before settling down to the continuous high pitched beeping noise, only to disappear on its own, a few hours later.

The machine is otherwise working perfectly so I am now ignoring it, after hours of struggling to get rid of it - and there are many of us suffering the same nuisance noise!

It seems after travelling and rebooting it is most troublesome - but then once it stops its gone until I have to restart the machine after a complete shut down!
If anyone resolves this by way of a trick Id love to know!
Barry

It has been at litle while, ane my memory may be faulty. I believe that I had the same thing — tone and black screen. I had upgraded the RAM and I just had not fully seated them. All that it took was to fully seat them. So, unseated RAM or faulty RAM can do this.

barrylsack said:

Mine is doing the same thing for several months now - but it finally stops on it own after a few hours of running!..
If anyone resolves this by way of a trick Id love to know!

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Classic example of a defective power supply that will probably get worse with age. Trick is defined in the show CSI. Follow the evidence. Use a meter to identify a defective supply. Or to know, without doubt, that the entire power system is good. Then move on to other suspects.

Trick is to have a growing list of components that are known good or suspect ... with doubt.

Until its power system is know good, then a computer can make numerous other parts act as if defective. Computer diagnosis always starts with the computer's foundation - its power system. That is done quickly and definitively (without doubt) by "Following the evidence". A meter has long been the proven trick even before PCs existed. Once a power system is known good, then move on to other suspects. IOW follow the evidence.

Continius beep at start up.

Hi:
I have had Macs for years both Powerbooks & Desktop. My first thought is your memory. One machine after adding memory, non apple, acted up when upgrading to Leopard. After many frustrating hours, I removed the new memory and reinstalled the original and then it went smoothly. Later I put the upgraded memory back in and no problem since. 3rd party memory is not always totally the same.

Folks chiming in with "memory/ram theories". The OP's problem is most likely not ram related. The OP's computer was making a continuous beep/screeching sound (as described by the OP). Memory/ram issues with Mac's are a repeating series of beeps. The beeps come in sets:

- 1 tone, repeating every 5 seconds: This indicates no RAM is installed.
- 3 successive tones, a 5 second pause (repeating): This indicates RAM does not pass a data integrity check.

Mac computers: About startup tones

Also remember that AFTER the OP removed some hard drives from the Mac Pro…the beeping/screeching stopped (ram was never touched).

- Nick

he hit a nvram error after the graphics card replacement tells me another bad graphics card

Stopped by the apple store today and the mac genius thought it might be a hard drive issue given that it stopped when the others were removed. I plan to do some testing tonight and see if I have any new info to share. I'll let you know.

Thanks.

Let me explain this in simple terms.

When you trip these files.

geforce
nvresman error codes

this all come from faulty nvidia geforce chipsets you need a mac compatible graphics card not a windows one all though it does work in 10.7 its not recommended go online to amazon and look for mac pro graphics card and buy one there and make sure it doesn't say pc flashed card

jsnc said:

Stopped by the apple store today and the mac genius thought it might be a hard drive issue given that it stopped when the others were removed.

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It's pretty unusual for a problematic HD to cause the beeping/screeching you mentioned. Problematic HD's usually just "die" a quiet death (other than sometimes a clicking sound).

But hey…if for some unknown reason it is a bad HD…that would be a MUCH easier problem to "cure".

- Nick

johnodd4 said:

he hit a nvram error after the graphics card replacement tells me another bad graphics card

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The one "standout" symptom this computer displayed is the constant high-pitched-tone/screech. Not usually a symptom of a bad video card. Just like a bad hard drive…bad video cards usually die a quiet death.

If there was no continuous high-pitched tone/screech (computer did not work). Then some HD's were removed…the screeching stopped…and now the computer works. Then I would say some other hardware could be the issue (ram or video card).

The constant non-stopping high-pitched tone/screech is the unusual symptom in this case.

- Nick

The card that is in there now was the top of the line video card when I bought the machine. Now whether or not it came from a mac originally, I am not sure, but I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary when I installed it. One thing however is that when I installed the replacement, one of the DVI ports make the screen have a strong pink tint. The other was fine, which makes me think the card had issues when I got it.

These were the options when I bought the machine:
Early 2008 Options
Base - ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT; 256 MB; GDDR3; 2 DL DVI

Standard Upgrades
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT (What I bought it with)
512 MB GDDR3
2 DL DVI

NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 (what I replaced it with)
1.5 GB GDDR3
2 DL DVI
Stereo 3D

jsnc said:

The card that is in there now was the top of the line video card when I bought the machine. Now whether or not it came from a mac originally, I am not sure, but I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary when I installed it. One thing however is that when I installed the replacement, one of the DVI ports make the screen have a strong pink tint. The other was fine, which makes me think the card had issues when I got it.

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I'm positive that if you purchased this Mac Pro brand new from Apple…it had a genuine Apple/Mac version video card in it.

As to the 2nd video card. If you are not sure if it is an original genuine Apple/Mac card…one pretty reliable tell-tale sign of a non-Mac card (PC flashed card) is if it has a round serial port on it. Mac video cards for Mac Pro's don't have serial ports on them. Another sign of a PC flashed card for an older Mac Pro is...if it was very inexpensive (under $50-$75). It's generally difficult to find a used original Mac Pro video card for under $100…and usually a good bit more if it's a decent quality card.

I'll throw another theory out there for anyone reading this thread. It's possible that this Mac Pro had/has two issues:

- A weak power supply that may have been there all along (getting weaker by the moment)…and causing the high-pitched screeching sound. And got "better" when some HD's were removed (less electrical load).
- A bad/faulty video card (throwing the kernel panic).

* Nick

I have had MANY power supplies that squeaked like that REALLY loud before they went BANG! So that is a possibility for sure. Like Nick said when the drives were removed and the load went down, maybe that is why the noise stopped.

jsnc said:

The card that is in there now was the top of the line video card when I bought the machine. Now whether or not it came from a mac originally, I am not sure, but I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary when I installed it. One thing however is that when I installed the replacement, one of the DVI ports make the screen have a strong pink tint. The other was fine, which makes me think the card had issues when I got it.

These were the options when I bought the machine:
Early 2008 Options
Base - ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT; 256 MB; GDDR3; 2 DL DVI

Standard Upgrades
NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT (What I bought it with)
512 MB GDDR3
2 DL DVI

NVIDIA Quadro FX 5600 (what I replaced it with)
1.5 GB GDDR3
2 DL DVI
Stereo 3D

Click to expand...

question is the nvidia quadro fx 5600 a windows card or a mac card???

the nvidia 8800 gt where known for solder joints that failed

As an update, I started adding hard drives in. The first one (2nd) started fine and shut it down after 10 minutes or so. After installing the third (of four) and after working for about 30 minutes, the screen went black, the screeching noise returned and I had to hold the power button in for about 5 seconds to get it to shut down. I'm thinking it probably is the power supply, although the graphics card is getting replaced too.. The Apple Store said they could check it, just not fix it, so I may try and make an appointment to take it down there. It does seem like I have 2 issues.

Ram is all recognized and the hard drives seem fine, so I think I am ruling those out. As far as the card, it looks like it is the PC version that has been reprogrammed for mac. Hopefully the new one I get will fully work and take care of that issue. Then the challenge will be to find a power supply without spending a ton of money on it.

Thanks.
Jeff

jsnc said:

As an update, I started adding hard drives in. The first one (2nd) started fine and shut it down after 10 minutes or so. After installing the third (of four) and after working for about 30 minutes, the screen went black, the screeching noise returned and I had to hold the power button in for about 5 seconds to get it to shut down. I'm thinking it probably is the power supply, although the graphics card is getting replaced too..

Click to expand...

Thanks for the update. That sounds like some pretty interesting testing…and great that the symptoms/problem are consistent.

- hard drives installed = screeching
- all but one hard drive removed = no screeching

Personally I would replace the power supply myself (to save money)…but I can understand not wanting to do it yourself. It can be a delicate procedure removing everything to get to the power supply.

- Nick