I bought a used dual-1.25 MDD about a year-and-a-half ago from a college in Washington state, and it arrived with a dead PSU. After checking prices for replacement PSUs (from $150-$500, at the time), I did a lot of googling and reading about the situation. Among other things, I learned that the 400-watt PSU was the original PSU for this CPU, and the 360-watter was the replacement offered by Apple when the original started dying like flies; as it turns out, the 360 wasn't much of an improvement. The real problem was (is) just a very bad original design, probably forced by trying to fit two GHz+ processors into a case designed for one 350 MHz chip.
To cut to the chase, and as Dan and Ted suggest, I decided to invest in a very-good quality 350-watt ATX PC PSU ($50 from Newegg), though it took a bit of looking to find one that would fit the MDD case. I rewired the harness myself - all it requires is patience and minimal soldering skills. True enough, if you go this route, you'll not be able to use Apple displays (unless you add a separate 28-volt PSU brick) - but as I have no Apple displays nor plan to get any, it's not an issue for me. So far, I've had not one second of trouble from this arrangement - none of the very common power-up problems endemic to the MDDs. I strongly urge anyone who experiences PSU problems with their MDDs to just bite the bullet and replace the Apple PSU with a generic PC ATX PSU: Much cheaper and much more reliable than the Apple-only fixes. -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
