[SOAPOT]

I have a G4 733 Digital Audio and it wont boot. I was having trouble with my SATA interface card not letting my system boot while it was in so I was trying different things. I finaly tried pulling the battery from the mother board. I left it out for about 2 min then put it back in and it wont boot!!! Not just won't boot, the only thing that the system will do is flash the power light when I press it. No fans, no whirring just the light on the front only when I push it. I took out all my aftermarket equipment just to rule it out, but nothing. it's still running on the stock proccessor. I think I could be a blown mother board. If it is would it me worth replacing? In case your wondering the power button on my 17" ADC monitor does the same thing as the cases. I checked and the power connectors and power button plugs are firmly seated in place. I know the hard drive is good because I checked it in another computer. I checked the RAM as well in another computer and that seems fine. It doesn't seem like a power supply issue because I'm able to see the light on the front. The only place it seems like could be a problem would be the mother board or the processor. Basically I want imput as to what you think it could be and what the best course of action would be. Thanks a bunch.

[reader50]

How many flashes when you push the button?

With the computer off, press and hold the CUDA button for 10 seconds. The CUDA button is usually near the battery. Afterwards, try to boot again.

Do any icons appear on the monitor when it fails to boot, like a prohibition icon? (a circle with a diagonal slash through it)

[SOAPOT]

the light only stays on as long as the button is pushed. Nothing shows up on the screen when the power button is pushed. so I tried the CUDA button after that and now when it boots it does a long light followed by a tone, then one long light blink then a short light blink then a very short light blink, then it repeats the pattern from the point after that tone (it doesn't do the tone again). Nothing shows up on the monitor the whole time. Thanks for the help I'll look for what the CUDA is on the forum, but if you don't mind could you tell me what it is? More than that I care about how to get my system running! thanks for the help I hope we can get this worked out.

[SOAPOT]

One more thing since resetting the CUDA the system fans actually turn, so there is some noise coming from the tower, a good sign I assume. I also tried different ram chips to no avail the chips in it all worked in a pc I tested. also checked the graphics card with a pci one I have it wasn't that either. if you've got any input I'm glad to hear it, thanks.

[reader50]

The CUDA reset button gets it's name from the letters "CUDA" being stenciled on the motherboard beside it on many models. It resets the power manager and wipes the PRAM to a default state. This does things like wipe the clock and boot drive selection, as well as clearing out any bogus settings that can be hanging up the boot process.

Systems sometimes hang on boot after a hardware change (adding a PCI card, changing the CPU, etc) and doing a CUDA reset fixes things. Apparently, settings specific to the older hardware configuration were still around and tripping up the boot process.

The startup light flashes can be understood using this Apple document. The document is specific to the G4 Cube, but the flash definitions are the same for your model.

Your G4 is old enough to suspect the battery has gone dead. A dead battery can prevent boot and/or cause some very odd behavior. A battery going dead causes the date/time to fail sometimes. If the battery has failed, try hitting the front reset button after the initial cold boot failed. A warm reboot will sometimes work.

A replacement 3.6V lithium battery can be obtained from Radio Shack catalog #23-026

[SOAPOT]

I'm up and running again, it was a bad chip of ram!!! I thought I had checked them all but apparently I missed one!! Thanks for all the good tips.