[Cottonsworth]

My Powermac G4 Dual 1GHZ just died on my when I was in the process of upgrading from Panther to Tiger. I am not sure if the upgrade was complete since I walked away from my computer and found a solid back screen when I returned. I tried rebooting and the computer comes on but all I got was a black screen. I tried swapping hard drives but that didn't do a thing. I took it to the Genius Bar and they told me that either my logic board or video card went bad. Any suggestions?

I decided to try swapping the video card first but none of the AGP video cards they had at Best Buy mentioned anything about Mac compatibility. The Geek Squad member told me to go ahead and purchase them and try it out since I could return them if it didn't work. With an Nvidia GeForce 7300 GT plugged it, the computer won't even power on. If I remember the video card the computer comes on but it still just goes to a black screen. How do I know which AGP video card will work with my Powermac?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[chris v]

Video cards have to be specifically made for Macs to work in them, without going to a lot of bother. Do you know anyone with a similar machine that you could temporarily swap video cards with?

Also, if you had any kind of sharing turned on, and you plug the machine in to someone's ethernet switch, you should be able to access its drive from a second machine if it's booting fine, except for no video out. That's haw I figured out my video card had gone bad on my QS. I tried to boot, and got no display, so after a few tries, I waited a mnute, then went to another machine on the network, and could log into it via SSH, so it was obviously booting, but with no video.

[Cottonsworth]

Nope, I don't know anyone else with this machine.

I'm not sure about the file sharing though. I don't think that is possible since it doesn't sound like the hard drive is booting up. The machine just turns on but nothing really happens. The fan on the video card is spinning though, so I don't know if that is an indication of whether or not the logic board is working or not.

I guess I will have to try to find an AGP card for a Mac. If anyone else has any experience with the problem I have, please chime in. Thanks.