The power supply unit recently gave out on my Power Mac G4 Gigabit Ethernet Dual 500 MHz. I have now replaced the PSU, but in doing so I seem to have done more harm than good.
When I turn the computer on with the power button, it plays a chime and after about ten seconds the monitor (LG Flatron 17") lights up. A small rectangle with text flashes briefly on the screen, but is gone before I can read it. The icon of a folder then appears, with alternately a left-facing smiling face and a question mark on it. After a couple of minutes this icon eventually turns into a smiling Mac in a Mac Plus frame. The pointer also appears on the screen, and can be moved about by means of the mouse. I suppose this means that the Mac is looking for a startup disk, and can't find one. Why not? I suspect it's because of careless handling of the hard drives when I was working in the case. Apple's Power Supply Replacement Instructions (accessed from docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75312) tell one to disconnect the power cables from any hard drives, and to do this I had to remove my two drives because the power cable on the lower drive was socketed in so tightly. I suspect that I accidentally zapped the drives with static electricity. Or can someone think of a more probable cause? What must I do if I want to get this faithful old workhorse back into working order again, if in fact this is possible? Install another hard drive? If so, should it be a Serial ATA drive? And does that mean buying a Serial ATA PCI controller card? If so, which kinds? The prices suggest it would be better to abandon the old machine. The old drives (now useless?) were a 120GB Western Digital IDE drive, configured as master, and the original 40GB Ultra ATA/66 7200-rpm, configured as slave. The operating system was Tiger 4.11. I will appreciate help and suggestions. Ronald Sweet -- 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
