How do I tell if a Power Mac G5 motherboard is bad?

So I picked up a powermac g5 and was told the logicboard was bad... It has no hard drive in it but when I turn it on I get to a screen that shows the mac face in a folder blinking with a questionmark... (No hard drive, I expected something similar) My question is how can I test this to see if the logic board is in fact bad or not without a hard drive? I have an external will that get me anywhere?


If I pull out an old hard drive off of a Sony Vaio how do I go about formatting and booting it on the mac? How do I eject the cd rom too?


edit... I forgot its LogicBoard not Motherboard!

Hold down the mouse button to eject the CD tray.
Do you have any of the restore discs or OS discs? You should be able to boot to one without a HD. They have a diagnostics tool on them. You would be able to run that to see if the logic board is ok or not.
If you have a HD, you can pop it in, assuming it's a desktop SATA HD. You'd need the restore disc to format the HD for Mac.
I think you hold down D at startup to bring up the diagnostics tool and C to bring up the disc for install.

First, The computer always turns on but sometimes it will actually boot to the folder screen and the other times it will turn on and nothing will come on the screen. Also, I picked up a hard drive but what do I need to do to load an os on it... I have Leopard retail disk too.

You installed the HD already? Boot up the computer and hold down the mouse button. This will eject the tray. Drop in the Leopard disc and push the tray back in and power off the Mac. This time power it on and hold down the D button. This should bring you to the Leopard install menu.

bryphotoguy said:

You installed the HD already? Boot up the computer and hold down the mouse button. This will eject the tray. Drop in the Leopard disc and push the tray back in and power off the Mac. This time power it on and hold down the D button. This should bring you to the Leopard install menu.

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This thing is so weird... I am trying to do that but now for some reason it won't even give me any video... its like the video works some and doesn't work sometimes

I took the hard drive out now and it lets me eject my disk but still... no video... it had video a few minutes ago...

Your post does not mention model details, but this may be of interest to you if the machine falls into the serial numbers listed:-

http://www.apple.com/support/powermac/powersupply/repairextension/

not me

The computer wouldn't power on if the power supply went bad.

All I can suggest to you is keep trying when the video does work.

bryphotoguy said:

The computer wouldn't power on if the power supply went bad.

All I can suggest to you is keep trying when the video does work.

Click to expand...

I took the video card out and put it back in but no luck... I tried a different power outlet too... hmm

It certainly isn't normal for this to be happening. Maybe the logic board is no good as the seller said.