MBP 1,1-10,2 Advice on broken Mac Pro 5.1?

[romanof]

I have a 'new' Mac Pro 5.1 given to me that is in really good visual condition, but died about only 5 minutes after boot. I would like to get it running again.

Symptoms... Actually none of any help. It had barely booted Mojave when it just suddenly shut down. No warning, no errors - just power off as if the power plug had been pulled. Pressing the power button now gives nothing - no clicks, no lights on the system board, nothing. Everything except the cpu tray and ram has been pulled, but still no change.

I dredged up a good power supply betting that it was the problem, but nope - still dead.

So... It is down to the system board or CPU tray. Fortunately parts for this old cheesegrater are cheap and easy to get, but anybody (with some experience in old Mac P's, maybe) want to take a guess on which? Or know how to tell which it might be?

Thanks.

 

[ToniCH]

You did also pull the battery and all the cables except the power? And measured that the new PSU is ok? And still no reaction from the system board (Backplane board)? Maybe its the board that died? But... don't just guess and throw money at it, try this first:

You should start by going through step by step the "Minimum configuration Testing" in Technician guide Mac Pro, pages 33-38. There are also other diagnostic procedures to follow. You will surely find out if the board died or its something else.

Download it from here.

 

[romanof]

Hey, thanks for that. I was looking for a manual, or just a set of troubleshooting pointers, without much luck, but hadn't found that one. Looks good.

Later...
Really good manual. Good power supply. Good CPU tray. Bad motherboard. Fortunately they are fairly cheap on ebay. This is a machine that you can take completely apart in a few minutes... AFTER you have spent an hour learning the tricks.