Okay, I recently bought a B&W G3 350 with a Rev B logic board. It had it's HDD wiped clean and was working properly before being shipped. Now that it has arrived, it is not booting. It powers on, the drives spin up, I get a good "Bong" and proper LED's on the logic board (two on steady indicating power - then the CPU LED flashes briefly), but it does not read the drives or power up the video, PCI, USB or ADB bus.
Things I've checked:
- PRAM battery: good @ 3.6v
- verified video card is good in another machine
- used multiple monitors
- reset CUDA: same
- reset Logic Board: same
- re-seated RAM, processor, video: same
- attempted booting with no RAM - gives proper one beep
- attempted booting with RAM but no Video or drives: same
- used ADB instead of USB keyboard: same
- attempted booting without battery: same
- used a known good processor: same
- removed battery and let it sit overnight: same
- dusted cleaned, shined entire case inside and out, told it it was beautiful: same
Any ideas? Obviously I cannot reset PRAM, NVRAM or enter open firmware as neither USB nor ADB busses are being initialized. It just seems to hang waiting for something to come up.
Any help or suggestions would be hot. Thanks!
Also check the cables while you are at it and make sure the are orientated right and snug. On some computers, if the HDD is not working, The screen won't even come up. (seems to be a bus to device talking problem. When my iBook hard drive went out, I couldn't even boot into firewire mode because it was waiting for the Hard drive to spin up and provide data. It could also plain be the board (damaged in shipping [jostled around until an itty-bitty, but necesary part broke off])
Damnnit... that is EXACTLY the issue on one of the Yosemites we were given to troubleshoot at the ACDT course, and I did manage to find the dud component- but I've forgotten which it was. Fabulous...
EDIT: Try pulling the Rage 128 card, and see if she gets any further. Also try moving it to another PCI slot. If that fails, remove all the ATA plugs from the logic board, and see if you get any video. If THAT fails, pull out most of the RAM chips leaving maybe one, and try moving it to different slots. Last thing I can think of is removing every plug from the rear of the Mac, in the unlikely event that some weird short in that area is causing your troubles. No go? Thats it- I give up.
EDIT #2 Ok, so you may already have tried those. And after thinking long and hard about it, I think your motherboard is screwed.
Tried all that
:cry:
More notes:
- LEDs DS1 (ATA) and DS6 (Ultra ATA) never light. I've checked the cables and drives. They work well in other machines.
- At boot I get DS7, DS8 (Power) and DS9 (CPU Request) all lighting up. Then DS9 goes out, I get the "Bong", DS9 flickers a couple of times, then nothing. I'm assuming that DS1(ATA), DS4 & DS5 (USB 1 &2) and DS6 (Ultra ATA) should also be lighting as the boot sequence goes on, but they're not.
EDIT:
I'm beginning to think so too. I have another logic board on tap, but it's a Rev A. We'll see what happens...
EDIT 2:
Addition to LED states: IF I set both drives to Cable Select and plug them into the first IDE connector, both DS1 (ATA) and DS6 (Ultra ATA) light solid for ~30 seconds then go out. Nothing else. This only works if I have it set to cable or slave and have them on the first IDE connector on the ribbon. Weird?
I'd say give the Rev A board a go, if that works you've found your culprit- but you won't want to USE that revision A board for long.
I remember when I was fixing up another B&W one time and it was doing pretty much what yours is. It sounds like you have the improper type of ram in there, or bad ram altogether.
Every time I've had a case of bad RAM in a Yosemite it's given a clear indication of the problem(usually with...is it 4 beeps?). So I'm not thinking that's the problem.
But hey- Macs are temperamental as all hell, so really it could be anything.
Just an update for anyone that may reference this thread in the future. I ended up buying a used Rev 2 logic board for my B&W. I combined it with all the other parts from the old board. It did the trick and everything works well now. I think the problem with the old one was something in the PCI brigde that would not allow the ATA controller to come up anymore.
I'd like to thank the Low End Mac swap list for proving a great used parts marketplace.
Thanks for all the help in diagnosing this problem!