Question

No Video - Loud Fans - No Bootup - PowerMac G5

Asked by: nuclearwerewolf

I have a PowerMac G5 Tower that upon pushing the power button,
Powers on but shows no video. The fans then shortly after get loud (running full blast).
There is no Mac Chime either.
Any ideas on where to start troubleshooting this machine?

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Asked On
2009-08-25 at 23:22:36ID24682221
Tags

No Video

,

Loud Fans

,

No Bootup

,

PowerMac G5 Errors

Topics

Apple Desktop

,

OS-X Server

,

Miscellaneous Hardware

Participating Experts
2
Points
500
Comments
11

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Answers

 

by: aloknet21Posted on 2009-08-25 at 23:33:51ID: 25184861

Please check your RAM. Remove one by one RAM and chech than. if it not help you than reset PRAM with this command

Press command+Option+P+R keys while you press power button. Press these keys for 60 seconds. it will give you beep 2 times.

Hope this will help you.

 

by: aloknet21Posted on 2009-08-25 at 23:34:20ID: 25184863

spelling correction check.

 

by: nuclearwerewolfPosted on 2009-08-25 at 23:35:56ID: 25184871

Doing so now, Will get back with you upon completion.

 

by: nuclearwerewolfPosted on 2009-08-26 at 00:53:57ID: 25185181

Video Card was replaced.
RAM was replaced.
PRAM Was reset.

LED Lights seen:

Blinking RED:
LED806 (CHECKSTOP)

Solid Red:
LED805
PWRON

Orange:
TRICKLE


 

by: nuclearwerewolfPosted on 2009-08-26 at 22:07:27ID: 25194767

Still nothing working?
Any other suggestions?

 

by: pheidiusPosted on 2009-08-31 at 20:21:45ID: 25228346

Almost always the apple diagnostic utility that the Mac techs have will tell you that your board and/ or one or both of your cpu/s are bad. This means the machine is not worth fixing through conventional apple sources. They may replace the board and find out the machine still does not work until you replace the cpu/s. You can buy a working replica of your machine on ebay for less than either. The g5 ,sadly, for a top of the line machine is a throwaway machine. This seems to be becoming a pandemic.
 You can try turning of one cpu at a time with chud tools and see if it will run on just one . If it does then you have a bad cpu. You can also try testing the rails of the power supply to make sure it is putting out the right power and then check your serial number against the warranty extended g5/s. You can try to pull your cpus ,clean, and reapply thermal paste and reset though you will need to run the apple thermal recalibration utility which they keep tight though not perfect control of. You can also try some esoteric things like aiming a blowdriver at the spot on the motherboard above the memory controller. This has resulted in boots for some which last as long as the machine is not shut down and naturally you know know your board is failing/toast. I hate to be so negative but your machine is likely a goner. Alternatively, you can try cooling it down to a very low temp and see if it boots. That is worst case but your symptoms are now almost certainly the classic g5 death rattle. Naturally get another mac or a mac imaged firwire external drive and boot your dying I mean ailing machine from it via firewire target mode. Then run diagnostic utilities on it and pray that your partition table is just so corrupt that a new drive will fix it. Apple denies there is any problem with g5 boards/cpu/s but an entire industry has sprung up that is eking out a good living repairing them for far less than Apple.

http://www.dttservice.com/powermacg5.html   Here is one. There are others. Obviously they have found where the solder is likey to microcrack and are fixing them for a third of what apple charges for replacement parts. Sad sad Sad

Last hope question. which exact g5 model do you have?

 

by: nuclearwerewolfPosted on 2009-08-31 at 21:53:06ID: 25228597

Power Mac G5, I think late 2005. I don't have the Macintosh on me anymore until I get back in town.

 

by: pheidiusPosted on 2009-09-01 at 06:31:32ID: 25231345

Ok late 2005, depending on the processors, could have been liquid cooled so you also need to remove the cpu covers and look for signs of coolant lrakage. There is a chance to that the PS could be covered hich means with careful and patient arguing the board is as well.If you can post serial when you  get back that would help.

 

by: nuclearwerewolfPosted on 2009-09-01 at 17:09:47ID: 25237282

After troubleshooting further based on The Power Supply and the Logic board was both trashed.
I did this with my personal experience and from other assistance locally. I feel that your finding "pheidius", is prodominately correct so I will give you the points. Thanks!

 

by: nuclearwerewolfPosted on 2009-09-01 at 17:12:18ID: 31620551

Thanks for your help. I am not putting this on in the knowledge base but, your help has assisted.

 

by: pheidiusPosted on 2009-09-01 at 19:12:54ID: 25237697

Sad news. check your serial number though as some were covered under an extended warranty.

20120131-EE-VQP-002

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