[MacNZ]

Hi,

My brother is currently computerless after the B&W G3 I upgraded for him a while back died. I have it sitting here and am trying to work out what is wrong with it.

The specs on the machine are G3 1Ghz upgrade (Powerlogix), ATA100 PCI card with 2x 40GB and a 160GB boot disk running off it, 512MB RAM and Radeon 9200. It was running OS X 10.4.7.

When I hit the startup button the machine powers up. I have been running it with the case open, and from what I can tell the Yosemite motherboards have little lights to tell what parts of the board are up and running properly!? The two lights bordering the far PCI slot, as well as the main light, next to the power-on button both stay lit up all the time. The other one, D59, near the ZIFF socketed processor lights but then goes out. I presume this may mean that the CPU is dead, or have I got it around the wrong way? It sounds like the hard drives are spinning up, and the fan is definitely going. Nothing comes up on the computer monitor, as something is obviously majorly wrong.

I thought I would check before parting this thing out. I do have the original processor at my other house but can't get it before the end of the month, and thought someone might know what the motherboard lights mean! Any help would really be appreciated.

Pete C.

[Lateralus]

The one thing I suggest, after having dealt with it twice myself; Remove the heatsink, wipe all thermal paste from the CPU die, and look for chipping on the corners.

PowerLogix, incredibly stupidly, didn't put any form of 'donut' around the CPU die to keep the heatsink from pivoting solely on it. Which makes die chipping around the corners incredibly easy.

A chipped die would definitely cause those symptoms.

[holstien]

I would agree that this sounds like a dead CPU.

I've seen CPUs get chipped during transport because the heatsink wobbled on the clips. Also, this can break the bonding in some thermal compounds, causing the CPU to overheat.

[Doc Juansinn]

Just FYI, the DS 9 LED is a "CPU Bus Request" indicator, its function described as follows;
When illuminated, this LED indicates that the CPU is requesting the bus. This LED will rarely glow as brightly as the others (like the Ultra ATA LED) given that the CPU is not always requesting the bus, and when it does, the period of time is short. As a result, you may need to watch this LED much more carefully than the others to tell if there is activity. If this LED is ever on continuously and bright, then the system is troubled and likely hung.

[Bennylen]

Have you checked the voltage on the little battery inside? The G3 batteries are years old now and it may have gone dead. That may be causing some of your problems.

[MacNZ]

Thanks for the intelligence. I did seem to remember a bit of 'wobble' between the CPU and heatsink during install. Today I'm going to do what you mentioned Lateralus and see if I can sort it out. Since the LED only lights on power up, and thats it, even if left on for quite a few minutes, i don't hold much hope out for the CPU. I did have the thought that the battery could be past its use by date too. Would the board power on at all though if that were the case? I thought I would try and hunt down a new battery today anyway so that I can try it out. Otherwise it will be back to old G3/350 in a month or so time -- don't look forward to the speed hit.

[barrettwilson1]

I had a similar problem with my B&W and tried re-seating all pci cards, cpu, and ram to no avail. I unplugged the unit, removed the PRAM battery, pressed the CUDA button for 5 seconds, and let it sit for 30 minutes. After putting the battery back in, and pressing the power button it started up fine. But if I had to restart or shut down, it would not start up again without going through the above steps again. I finally replaced the PRAM battery and it solved my problem.