I have a Beige G3 that will not boot. I came to switch it on and I get the following symptoms:
-Drives will not spin up unless disconnected from the IDE bus
-No chime
-No monitor output
-the power LED does not light up
I have tried the following to attempt to fix it:
-replacing the PRAM battery
-pressing the CUDA switch
-all CMD-opt key combinations
Does anybody have any suggestions on what to do to fix it??
Joel
First step is the smell test...do you smell smoke?
Try reseating everything, including the cpu, ram, pci slots, power connections, ide, scsi,
and so on.
If that doesn't work,
Probably a dead logic board or cpu
but...
I had the same symptoms when I forgot to switch the little power supply jumper from mac to pc when changing power supplies. Could also be a dead PSU. Try an atx psu, they're cheap and it's super easy to make a beige work. Like I said, there's a jumper marked mac and one marked pc. I think they're near the pci slots, but it's been a few months. Anybody remember?
When going in for a smell test... always try to avoid inhaling too deeply. I do that far too often at work and the stench of burning capacitors and such always makes me gag so much I nearly throw up.
Ew.
See, the secret to a successful (non vomit) smell test is a smell test monkey, failing that the neighbor's kid will do in a pinch.
I have tested all power output lines on the power supply and it seems to be giving out the right voltages.
I have also tried reseating all the removable components and none seemed to be loose.
There doesn't seem to ba any sign of any damage at al to either side of the mobo and there was no smell at all (other than the usual "computer" smell!)
The machine died in its sleep, It had gone to sleep, I tried to move the mouse, press keys etc. to wake it which didn't work so I did a cmd-ctrl-power to restart it and it did this
The jumper is next to the PCI slots and it is set to "mac pwr/supp", I haven't changed it since I got the beige.
Joel
When you are troubleshooting problems, disconnect everything except the monitor, kbd, & mouse.
When you reset CUDA, did you follow Apple's procedure? See Mac PRAM, NVRAM, CUDA/PMU & Battery Tutorial
http://www.geocities.com/texas_macman/pram.html
Cheers, Tom
Mac Troubleshooting, Maintenance & Tips
http://www.geocities.com/texas_macman/MacTroubleshoot.html
The summer solstice is a week away. Consider a goat sacrifice and a good midnight dance.
My Beige G3 croaked a couple weeks ago, similar situation -- shut it down one evening, totally inert the next day.
Power supply was bad, new one fixed it right up, and the drives don't get scrambled like they used to. I may even get radical this weekend and try my Artixscan scanner on the built-in SCSI buss again!
A bad PS can supply strange voltages (low, thankfully!) and cause all sorts of odd problems due to erratic chip operation.
Peter