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Christoph · Nov 26, 2005, 09:09 PM

Hello,

I am rather new to the Mac world so please forgive me if I sound rather slow. I have a Powermac G3 Blue and White that I purchased from a friend. I got a DVD Burner to put in it from another friend. He had this burner in his B&W and it worked fine. Now that it's installed into mine the computer won't turn on. I tried putting the old drive back in but I can't get the computer to turn on at all. I know the power chord works fine. Any suggestions or help would be great.

Thanks

Christoph

bowwowman · Nov 27, 2005, 06:21 AM

When you say it wont turn on at all, do you mean that pushing the power button gives you no lights, beeps, chimes, disk-spinning-up sounds or other indications of start-up activity, basically a power-dead machine?

If so, then you may have pinched/crimped the power cable to the drive when installing it, causing a short circuit. This is easy to do in the B&W (been there, done that) due the design of the mounting bracket and the limited room to manuever the cables.

Recommend you pull the drive and check for this. If this is the situation, you may have fried your power supply too

DO NOT attempt to start the machine until you resolve this !

please post back with results

jcadam · Nov 27, 2005, 06:22 AM

check all cables, make sure you didn't pull something loose in all of your fandangling around inside the case. Check the ribbon cable between the front power board and the logic board

If all else fails, zap the PRAM.
edit: oops, that last bit might be hard to do if the machine won't even light up.

Christoph · Nov 27, 2005, 12:34 PM

Yes, absolutely nothing happens when I push the power button.

I will look into those things and see what I can find.

Thanks for the help. I really appreciate it.

Any other suggestions would be great.

jdiddy · Nov 28, 2005, 05:22 AM

Try replacing the battery. I was given the same machine and the system would not turn on so I replaced the pram battery and the machine powers up every time with no issues.

JoshuaZ · Dec 1, 2005, 06:01 PM

weird. Maybe you broke the power button while installing the drive. It may sound silly, but it could have happened. Have you tried using a keyboard to turn it on?

chefpastry · Dec 1, 2005, 06:43 PM

Try leaving it unplugged over night with the internal battery removed. Then, the next day, put the internal battery back in, plug it in, and try powering up again.

This has helped me before.

Christoph · Dec 2, 2005, 04:22 PM

I replaced the PRAM battery and now it turns on but I get the blinking question mark in the folder. I tried zapping the PRAM but it still shows up when I turn the computer on. It's there for a few moments and then everything boots up and works normally. Any suggestions?

Chris

Christoph · Dec 2, 2005, 04:23 PM

I replaced the PRAM battery and now it turns on but I get the blinking question mark in the folder. I tried zapping the PRAM but it still shows up when I turn the computer on. It's there for a few moments and then everything boots up and works normally. Any suggestions?

Chris

Captain Obvious · Dec 2, 2005, 08:32 PM

Originally Posted by Christoph

I replaced the PRAM battery and now it turns on but I get the blinking question mark in the folder. I tried zapping the PRAM but it still shows up when I turn the computer on. It's there for a few moments and then everything boots up and works normally. Any suggestions?

Once it has booted up go into prefs and select that drive as the boot drive

If the battery is fine or it is not unplugged after that it will remember those settings and no more blinking question mark.