[Andrew Stephens]

I'm looking at an iMac G4. When I got it it wouldn't boot, it chimes but sticks on a blank grey screen.

I hauled the drive out and it was corrupted (got most of the data off) so I put a new 160Gb drive in.

Unfortunately it still won't boot. It just hangs after chime on a grey screen. I know the drive doesn't have a system on it yet but it won't boot into FW target mode, single user boot.

I'm guessing it's actually a logic board fault?

Any ideas?

[seanc]

Have you got the master & slave configured correctly? Does it do anything more with NO drives attached?

[Andrew Stephens]

The new drive was set to cable select but I've hoiked it out and set it to master. Not checked the cd drive, I assume it will be set to slave but I guess it can't hurt to check. Might just pull the ide bus and try to boot from a fw drive just to eliminate things.

[Andrew Stephens]

OK with no drives attached it's still a grey screen. Attached a fw dvd drive to boot from but nothing.
So it's checking RAM etc and giving a chime but not getting as far as checking for a system disk.

[Big Mac]

Strange. What about holding down T at boot to try target disk mode?

[Andrew Stephens]

Originally Posted by Andrew Stephens 

OK with no drives attached it's still a grey screen. Attached a fw dvd drive to boot from but nothing.
So it's checking RAM etc and giving a chime but not getting as far as checking for a system disk.

update: When I originally popped the case the TDMS cable fell out of the connector on the motherboard. The cable should be firmly attached and when I put it back in its very wobbly. May be this? Will try connecting to second monitor. mIght have been starting after all but not displaying.

[HWgeek]

Did the cable repair work??

[Andrew Stephens]

Originally Posted by HWgeek 

Did the cable repair work??

Nope. I attached an external screen and it started fine. Must have been a fault in the TDMS cable somewhere. Customer was happy to have it back to use with a small external screen as a print server.