A friend dropped of his iMac SE the other day for me to have a look. It had been running fine, but last week he decided to move it to a different room, and now it won't boot.
When you first plug it in & turn it on, you can hear the monitor surge & crackle a little (seems to me to be normal), the drive starts to spin up, then it all shuts down. No startup bong, no display, no nothing. After that first attempt, pressing the power button yields nothing, at least until you wait a bit, unplug the power cord, plug it back in and try again.
Anybody seen anything similar to this before and know what the cause is? I'm thinking maybe the power supply, or maybe the analog board.
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And while we're at it, anybody have a link to a good take-apart guide for the slot-load iMacs? This thing looks more like a puzzle than anything else. And I've taken a few of these things apart before!
the analog board. it's the board that provides the Power to the board, as well as the sync signals/power to the monitor, etc...
Provides power to the board(?) or the monitor?
Is it common for that to fail real suddenly like that? He said it was working fine the day he moved it; shut it down, carried it to its new home, plugged it in, and nada. Total downtime was less than ten minutes.
Thanks for the diagnosis!
it sounds like the same porblem when you try to install OS X on it with out the firmware update.
Version 10.2.8, I believe. Doubt that's the problem.
have you held the cuda button for 30 seconds
... but did it anyway. No change. Does that make me gullible?
no not at all, have you tryed takeing all but one stick of ram out and trying do the same with the reas of the stick's. i dont really know much about the iMac all that is does that if you try to install OS X on it and the firmware not being up to date.
... can it be fixed with a flyback transplant, or must the entire AB be replaced?
Alternatively, can the thing be used without the internal monitor? It's got the monitor port behind the little panel on the back.
I'm just looking to give the owner some options. He's primarily a PC guy, but keeps a Mac around for odd jobs (he's a web developer.) Telling him his spiffy little iMac is dead isn't gonna go over very well.
Nope you still need the board even with external video as its basically a powersupply. But, its definitly the board, not sure if you can just replace the flyback though.
it's really not worth it. you can buy another imac like that for $35, and transfer the HDD and stuff, and have it working. The Analog board is the down-fall of the iMac G3 series. They are known for going out. I am still waiting for my mom's to die. Then we will get the new iMac with the Dual Core x86.
i hope the Beige G3 AIO dont have that problem
I have yet to hear of that problem on an AIO
$35? I dunno about that. If I read the label on the bottom of it correctly it's a 700MHz machine (although I can't confirm that because I can't get it to boot.) If he bought a lesser machine, do the logic boards among the slot-load iMacs have enough in common to do a direct swap?
If you know something I don't (I'm sure that IS the case
), do you know of any good sources for such deals?
Thanks!
that you can do a straight swap on the board. just buy a 1st gen DV iMac, and transfer the stuff like drives and the board. That should work
Yep, in slot-loaders it's a PAV - Power Analog & Video board. You can't boot the machine without either swapping the mobo to another iMac or hacking a power suppy. I'm still debating if I should try and spend the $35-ish for a flyback to see if it will fix my 400 DV.
if you keep the imac cool it shouldnt have problems with the fly back transformer. imac SEs still go for over $80 on ebay. your thinking about the trayloads that go for $25-$50
if you keep the imac cool it shouldnt have problems with the fly back transformer. imac SEs still go for over $80 on ebay. your thinking about the trayloads that go for $25-$50
Does anybody have a link to a guide -- html or pdf -- that gives instruction on tearing down the top end of a slot-load iMac? I've searched all my usual haunts for one and come up empty.
I've got one for a tray-loader, but this slot-loader has me stumped. And I don't want to break anything!
Google for imacdv.pdf which should turn up the Service manual for it.