[Stoopid]

So my Rev A g4 15" LCD flat panel imac just wouldn't start the other day.

It was put to sleep before I went to bed and when I woke up it wasn't on and wouldn't start. No chime, no power, no nothing.

I was nervous about opening it up and needing heat sink goo and all that so I took it to a great local repair shop (Mac Clinic in Montreal), and 1 hour and $70 later, I learned this is what the fix was:

They reset the PMU.

I found instructions online here:
http://www.smalldog.com/newsarchive/...lay.php?id=100

and a picture of the button here:
http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~dgolden/reset.jpg

I've got no reason for why it happened other than that it's 3 years old.

I'm posting this not for feedback, but in case anyone else out there gets the same problem and they want the solution. If you are afraid that your power supply broke, it probably didn't. It will take you appoximately 10 minutes to fix this. Or, if you are not a do it yourselfer, don't be afraid to bring it in the shop. It won't cost too much.

Good luck!

[Detrius]

They charged you $70 to reset the PMU??? That's a two minute procedure. If the machine didn't do anything when they pushed the button, the next step is to reset the PMU. If the machine DID boot when they plugged it up, the Date & Time would have been wrong, and it would have said something like 7:01PM 1/1/1969 or something like that, which indicates a crashed PMU. The procedure at this point is: reset PMU, set Date & Time, shut down machine, and unplug it for 15 seconds. Plug it back in and see if it kept the time. If so, you are done. If not, they replace the battery--which may be another 10 minutes.

An hour labor is excessive on a PMU reset--unless they told you up front it's a minimum of an hour labor for anything. Still, I think it's excessive for a PMU reset.

[Stoopid]

Yeah it was a minumum charge. I was a little peeved when I learned I could have done it myself and that it was so simple, but I was kind of in a bind... in another country with a limited timeframe, no tools, and no other computer to browse the web and find this answer.

But overall, you're quite right. It's kind of expensive for such a quickie fix. That's why I posted this... so others can quickly find the answer to this problem if they ever have it. Adding to the power of MACNN!