Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Freeflyer · Dec 22, 2003, 07:43 PM

Hi,

just taken delivery of a second hand powermac G4 450 AGP.

All looked good, no damage etc. Plugged in my pc monitor to the vga on the card (ATI rage 128) plugged in a usb keyboard and mouse and turned on.

Loud single beep, fans and drive operate, but nothing on the screen. Tried a couple of times, but same thing. Checked apple's support and it tells you to reseat video card, ram and reset pmu, all of which I've done, but to no avail.

The machine sits there, with the power light flashing twice every 20 seconds or so.

Can anyone suggest some further troubleshooting. With no monitor things are limited, are there any tests you can do that give beeps etc to check the basics.

Is the flashing power button indicative of a fault?

Hope that someone here can give me some ideas before I have to start contacting the seller (ebay individual).

Thanks in advance,

J.

OreoCookie · Dec 22, 2003, 08:04 PM

How about contacting the person/company that has sold the PowerMac to you?

If you wait longer, it gets harder, trust me.

Freeflyer · Dec 22, 2003, 09:06 PM

Yeah, I was going to do that in the morning, I just wanted to see if there was anything I could try this evening, just to make sure that there wasn't anything silly that I was missing.

J.

starman · Dec 22, 2003, 09:36 PM

A "pulsating" power button indicates it's sleeping.

You say it's "flashing". I don't know what that would mean.

Mike

OreoCookie · Dec 22, 2003, 09:49 PM

Well, a loud singe beep sounds like something is wrong, so I don't think his Mac is simply `sleeping'.

reader50 · Dec 22, 2003, 09:59 PM

Power light flash code for startup problems:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58780
The document says it's for the Cube, but the flashing code is correct for all modern desktop Macs.

Your PowerMac isn't detecting any RAM. There is no RAM soldered onto the PowerMac motherboard, so there has to be some plugged in.

If there is RAM installed, then try pressing the CUDA reset button near the battery. Do it with the system off, and hold the CUDA button down for 10 seconds. Then try to boot up.

Your system takes PC100 or PC133 RAM - either type will do, and you can mix them. Do not try DDR DIMMs, they are not compatible.

Freeflyer · Dec 22, 2003, 10:27 PM

That was fast, I was just coming back to post that I'd found out it is indicating bad ram.

A single beep is bad ram, the lights flash the number of beeps plus one (ie 2 flashes for one beep, 4 flashes for 3 beeps). Took an hour of trawling the web to find that.

I now have to contact the seller and see if she'll refund part of the cost for some new memory.

Cheers,

J.

bbales · Dec 23, 2003, 10:01 AM

Glad it's just bad ram. Let us know how it all turns out. I'm still using a G4 400 MZ, so it's nice to see other people are still using older machines!

Freeflyer · Dec 23, 2003, 04:40 PM

OK, it's working now. It was more than just bad ram, the socket that the ram was in was bent and the connections broken.

A new ram dimm in another socket and all's well. Won't need all 4 sockets so no real harm done.

I guess those UPS guys really do throw stuff about.

Thanks for all the help and advice, that's more things learned for the bag of tricks.

Cheers,

J.

bbales · Dec 23, 2003, 10:15 PM

Glad to hear it. Enjoy your new, old computer.