On Mar 8, 2011, at 6:03 PM, Ronald Sweet wrote: > 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?
Check all your drive cables. Unplug and re-plug them. Boot from a Installer disk, go to System Information and see if the drive is showing up. Also check Disk Utilities to see if it's appearing there. > > 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? Whether you want to go SATA depends on how big a drive you want and how much you want to pay for it. Yes, a SATA drive would require a SATA controller. This model's IDE controller is limited 128Gb without a workaround. > > 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. Clark Martin Redwood City, CA, USA Macintosh / Internet Consulting "I'm a designated driver on the Information Super Highway" -- 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
