On Jan 15, 2013, at 9:50 AM, [email protected] wrote: > Hi all, my trusty PowerMac G5 DP 2.7 (Early 2005) isn't trusty anymore. :-( > > Yesterday I was reading my e-mails (in Entourage 2008), and it suddenly > froze. > After powering it down and restarting, it won't boot and the power light does > 3 > blinks, pause, 3 blinks again, on and on. > Apple info says it's "Incompatible memory (RAM) is installed". > But the Ram is the same it was for the last 2 years. > Besides, I tried a couple of Ram sticks I had around, and it does the same; > so n > o, I don't think it's really the memory. > > Anyway, lots of info on the Net about this event, and quite often it turns > out i > t's the logic board (or the memory slots) "gone bad", probably due to > lead-free > soldering gone broken somehow (Google "tin whiskers" for some scary stuff). > Although most reports like that are about G5s older than mine. > > I've collected answers and suggestions and I'm going to try them, but I > wanted t > o ask here, in case some member had similar trouble and found a solution. > The funniest advice is to blow your hair dryer onto the memory slots for some > mi > nutes :-D and it seems the best working, but it's usually just a temporary > fix. > > I hope for some magic or voodoo now. :-) > It would be a waste throwing this beautiful machine into the bin.
You can try spraying some contact cleaner into the slots, and gently rubbing a mars eraser (the white rubber kind) gently on the contacts on the DIMMS themselves. However, the suddeness and the fact that it happened while it was running does seem to indicate that maybe it's amemory controller that failed on the mobo. Have you tried populating different slots (the G5's need them in pairs, but any pair in any slot set will do) if you get the errors regardless, it's most likely the logic board. -- Bruce Johnson University of Arizona College of Pharmacy Information Technology Group Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs -- 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
