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Project Alice

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jul 13, 2008
2,092
2,174
Post Falls, ID
Hi all,

I have a dual 2.0 G5, it sat for a little over a year but the last time it was hooked up it worked just fine and never really had any issues until now.

It starts up, chimes. and thats it. No video. I can hear hard disk activity for a couple seconds, my display light turns green for half a second then back to orange. then I hear the fans pulsating. You could compare it to a car trying to idle with a massive vacuum leak.

All Ram slots are full and installed in the correct pairs.

What I've tried so far:
Reseated the graphic card, and removed the USB card I have in it.
Unplugged all drives and checked the connections.
Reset PRAM (It does chime the second time but still shows the above symptoms)
Reset the PMU
Finally, I replaced the PRAM battery
After replacing the battery I reset the PMU again to no avail, and then PRAM. Thats when I decided to post here.

I've been reading through other threads for the last hour, how it could be one of the CPUs or the logic board. I just find this unlikely as the computer functioned perfectly fine the last time it was used. I don't see how it sitting in my spare room could cause any harm other than the battery going bad.
Anyone have any clue?
 

QSDP-User

macrumors regular
Jan 13, 2015
144
89
California, USA
Maybe bad RAM or the video card went kaput - as if by a mischievous gnome within the past year.
Hard to fathom but this can happen.

Try restarting with just a matching pair of RAM as a process of elimination.
I'm guessing you don't have another video card for the G5 or you'd have try that.

I was reading this post in an iFixit dot com PowerMac G5 thread:
https://www.ifixit.com/Answers/View/6016/Why+won't+my+G5+boot#answer130134
 

Project Alice

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jul 13, 2008
2,092
2,174
Post Falls, ID
Update guys, thanks for the replies.

I think my video card may be going out, I tried it with an old dell analog monitor.. and she worked just fine. But it doesn't display anything until the OS is loaded. I can always find another AGP card. At least the G5 works though lol.
 

QSDP-User

macrumors regular
Jan 13, 2015
144
89
California, USA
I think my video card may be going out, I tried it with an old dell analog monitor.. and she worked just fine. But it doesn't display anything until the OS is loaded.

Hello, that scenario sounds similar to an OSX-Mac (Intel Mac Pro in my case) booting up with
a working flashed PC video card (i.e., bought from reputable eBay seller) whereas with one monitor connected
1) This DOESN'T appear ---> the displayed apple icon during the beginning POST* test ,
2) Then after the POST test is finished, the desktop appears.

I guess that is a caveat of many flashed PC video cards (depends on the card model I guess).
The seller informs this to a buyer. On video cards with two DVI video ports,
the seller includes a DVI-toVGA adapter for one of the ports for a 2nd monitor.
The 2nd monitor displays the POST test with the apple icon on bootup.
Plus it would show the bootup drive options when the [option] is pressed.

I don't know if this has anything to do with your situation, but I thought I'd mention it.

*POST (Power-On Self-Test) is the diagnostic testing sequence that a computer's basic input/output system (or "starting program") runs to determine if the computer keyboard, random access memory, disk drives, and other hardware are working correctly.
http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/POST-Power-On-Self-Test
 
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