eMacs with no display on startup....

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schmoburger's picture
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eMacs with no display on startup....

So, Ive recently procured a few eMacs... well, last year... but they havent moved from where they are on my floor so its still pretty recent. But i digress...

Basically, neither of these wretched boat moorings will power up the CRT it seems... Is this an endemic issue to the eMac? I'm gonna assume given 3 have more or less the same issue, that know the answer to this already. These are the later variant with the smaller speaker grille holes in them, and according to this optical drive flap I just found beside my G4, theyre 1Ghz models.

So, assuming it is an endemic issue, what is it and is it worth fixing?... ie easy to fix? just a few capacitors or is it somethin crap crap like the FBT?

I don't particularly care as I have always had zero time for eMacs ever since they were new... theyre rotten looking lumps of trash hence why ive stripped two of em of theyre hard drives and burners to go in other projects. Would just be interesting to know, A, whther theyre fixable and B, what remains that is usable. Smile

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Re: eMacs with no display on startup....

This is just a comment, but I recently purchased a few of these from the original owner for $50.00. I had the same problem as they were sitting in his garage since the "hey day" when he was actually using them.

Well I opened them up to find the battery "blew up" and corroded everything reducing all three of them to parts.

From the IIgs on people who owned these that were not computer savvy don't realize these things had batteries in them.

I am not saying this is your problem, but you might check there first.

Jay

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Re: eMacs with no display on startup....

Got the logic board sitting beside me and the battery seems mint and not corroded, but yes, I have seen what you speak of a handful of times... usually not in something as recent as an eMac tho. I've come across 2 or 3 LC475 pizzabox units that had the battery deplete to the point where it collapsed and started ooozing and trashed the surrounding circuitry... they had been in storage close to 10 years in a backroom of a highschool and were no doubt the original PRAM cells. funnily enough tho they are the only computers Ive seen it happen to...

schmoburger's picture
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Re: eMacs with no display on startup....

It's been about 12 months since i lat hit the web, so this probably now constitutes grave digging, however i figured i should poke my head back into this old thread nonetheless to document some updated findings. So upon further pulling down the board and seperating what i beleive is an AV board from the logic board, i ended up discovering a few very poor looking electrolytic capacitors on this board, which were expanded and leaking. i dare say this is the source of my problems or at least part of a larger problem possibly stemming from a faulty FBT. i do recall from the days of essing with grey Powermacs of the 5xxx series that they were also pretty notorious for blowing FBT's, and when they would blow they would also cause a selection of AV capacitors to blow in their wake, meaning that even if the transformer was changed, if the damaged caps werent replaced also, the machine would still not show a display.

So, in any case it looks like this is in fact an endemic problem to the series, as i also have since come by another two with similar issues that have since been stripped and binned, as whilst the issue is not strictly irrepairable, i only like the eMac due to the concept behind it, ie making the G4 architecture accessible to the education sector at a price point that was phenomenally attractive and in a functional package conducive to use in the intended environment... i dont like them enough to actually have any inclination to repair one at a component level. however.

Kieran

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