IMac G3 - Powerup Issue

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IMac G3 - Powerup Issue

I had the Mac running the other night and it locked up (trying to get my internet working on it).

I tried to restart the system (pulled the plug then waited and tried to restart) and failure.

Symptom:

Monitor portion degauses and sounds like it is starting up. Power light comes on. No Boot Up and No HD Activity.

Here is what I have tried so far.

1] Swapped out the Battery - Still no Change
2] Tried the reset button on the board (Think its called the PMU Reset switch) - Still No Change
3] Removed the HD Ribbon Cable from the board and the drives - Now the HD Powers up but still no boot attempt no flashing icons on the screen.

The Screen remains Black.

Any Suggestions?

Thank you for your time.

Jon

coius's picture
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Problem:

PAV
Power/Analog/Video

It went out. time to throw out the machine and get a new one. Unless you want to pay the price eBay is charging Beee
TOTALLY not worth it. Just buy a powermac of the Same speed. they don't have the issues Smile

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chalk up another one

Yep, it's a recurring topic on this forum. Here's probably the most recent before yours:
http://www.applefritter.com/node/20096

Although...the fact that the harddrive powers on when disconnected from the motherboard...? Could that point instead to a bad motherboard? What would the machine do if it had a bad motherboard?

You didn't mention which model of iMac. What's the speed?

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G3 350 with 256 Meg Ram 40 Gi

G3 350 with 256 Meg Ram 40 Gig HD. So at least I got some good parts out of it Sad Though I would rather have the working Mac.

Hawaii Cruiser's picture
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350mhz means you have one of

350mhz means you have one of the models that so often suffer the notorious PAV problem. The earlier models usually suffered a different problem--the bad flyback whatchamacallit.

Since my last post on that earlier thread I've found two more iMac DV's on the side of the road. That makes six in the course of about a year. Five had the PAV problem, but the last one just had a bad harddrive, so that was a nice score--500mhz summer 2001 special edition. Picked up a bunch of good SDRAM sticks out of all of them.

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Yea so far I got a 40 GIG HD

Yea so far I got a 40 GIG HD and 256 Ram and a copy of OSX out of the deal but would rather have a working Mac Blum 3

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Yeah!

Six road scores in one year? where do you live, man? People kill each other for rev A g3 imacs out here in da northwoods.

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REV A G3 is that like the fir

REV A G3 is that like the first of the IMacs out there? The "Trayloader" cuz I do have one of those and I wish I could get more memory for it ..... 32 MB Stock SUX

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instead of upgrading the old iMacs

just get a PowerMac G3 or early G4. they are cheap as dirt, and you can use a regular VGA monitor with most of them.

I got a B&W G4 (Blue and White G3 w/ a Yikes G4 CPU and the firmware patch) w/ 1GB Ram (2x 256, 2x 512. sadly, it tops at 1GB) but you can look for an AGP model or so. much faster, and OS X takes quite a bit advantage of the Alti-vec Instruction set that the G4 has.

When I switched out my G3 450Mhz for the G4 400, i noticed a 75% increase in speed, because most of the apps I ran on it, relied on Alti-vec quite a bit.

if you want another machine like the imac, i sugges that you get an eMac. I know that some of them had problems, but there was a run of them that didn't. Also, there is always the G4 imacs. not *too* expensive. I would get the USB 2.0 models though

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The Rev. A trayloading iMacs

The Rev. A trayloading iMacs are decent enough to hold you over until you quickly get another machine, but I wouldn't invest any serious money in one. You can probably pick up a fairly cheap 128mb or 256mb SODIMM to kick up that memory. They have to be low density RAM. The motherboard is somewhat a pain to get out of the machine and the memory is on the processor daughtercard which is another trick dealing with in itself. You could put your harddrive in that machine too, but getting to the harddrive is even more complex. They're not user friendly designed interiors. If you do want to continue with the Rev. A, make sure you do all the firmware updates in OS 9 first before attempting any kind of OS X install--which includes simply putting in a harddrive with OS X on it, or even booting an OS X install CD. But like coius says, you'd be so much better off going in the other direction. If the 350mhz used 168pin PC100, then you can use that RAM in a Beige, B&W, or early G4.

I live in a fairly upscale, old suburban community in the back of a Honolulu valley close to the University. Maybe there's more of a preponderance of Macs in the community, I don't know. This area was carved out of the rainforest, so the humidity's very high, so that probably adds greatly to the environment's PAV killing abilities. I stick with the towers myself. They last.

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