[BoulderDash]

Hey there!
This morning, I spent 2 hours transferring 300 home movies to an iMac G5 17" that we use as a media server for our 3 Apple TVs. That way we can sync all of the Apple TVs to the iMac G5 17" and have our home movies available throughout the house.

As I was about to add the 300 home movies to the iMac G5 17" iTunes Library (since the movies were now on iMac G5 17" hard drive, as opposed to scattered throughout 5 cameras), I saw that there was an update to iTunes available (10.5.2). I decided to update iTunes before adding the movies to the iTunes Library.

The update went well and I then quit Software Update after seeing that no other updates were available. After quitting, I then decided to shut down and then planned on booting up the iMac G5 17" since it had been on for about 2 months straight. "It's time," I thought. After selecting "Shut Down..." I got an alert-style message on the screen that said something like "The iMac is updating its boot caches and will shut down after this is done."

And it then shut down about 30 seconds later. I then proceeded to press the power button... to no avail. Again and again. "Damn." I then took the iMac G5 17" back off to access its internals (thank God it's so easy on these models as opposed to the aluminum iMacs!) and ran through Apple's iMac G5: Troubleshooting when your computer won't turn on workflow. Verdict? "Your logic board needs to be replaced." There's no way that on this 6 year old machine that it's worth it to actually replace its logic board. So, because I can't access the iMac G5 17" internal hard drive at the moment, my questions are:

Are the files that I transferred over to the iMac G5 17" hard drive before this catastrophic failure, all right? Could they have become corrupt?

I feel that they should be fine and intact because: the home movie transfers started and ended without any errors, updating iTunes wouldn't have touched the home movies, and there really is no correlation between a logic board failure and its host machine's internal hard drive.

Obviously, I'll be able to find out once I go and purchase an external hard drive enclosure and then connect said external hard drive enclosure and iMac G5 17" hard drive to another iMac. But, I guess I'm left wondering if even though the files are there... if they are intact. As much as I love my home movies, I don't want to have to watch all 300 to see for myself!

Any thoughts on this matter would be great (and would help me stay calm until this evening when I get an external hard drive enclosure). Thanks in advance!
BD

[reader50]

I expect they're fine. And my guess is the capacitors have gone bad in your PS or logic board. Probably the PS - that's the usual cause of power-up failures. If the logicboard caps had failed, you usually get symptoms while running. Like graphical glitches and/or crashing.

[BoulderDash]

You know, about 4 years ago the capacitors in this very machine went bad (leaking fluid as seen in this photo). So, I took my out-of-warranty iMac G5 17" in to an Apple Store and complained about the poor and wide-spread production quality of these very models.

Rightfully so, Apple replaced the logic board and motherboard on this machine and didn't charge me a dime. Again, that was 4 years ago, so I'm not too disturbed that it's finally died. I'm more concerned with making this a successful "salvage and recovery" of the files mission than I am in a successful "diagnose and repair" of the iMac mission.

It's just such a shame that nothing can be done with this iMac G5 17" once I pull its newer 2TB internal hard drive and get its files off of it. It seems like such a waste to simply dispose of it due to it's PS or logic board failure.

Any ideas on what to do with this? Any place that purchases these things for parts? Thanks again,
BD

[Waragainstsleep]

Your files should be just fine.

When you say it doesn't turn on, does the LED come on at all? Can you hear any noise from the fan or HDD trying to start? When you take the back off an plug it in, does the power LED light up on the logic board?

If the power LED stays off, its probably just the PSU that failed. I expect these can be found cheaply enough if you want to resurrect it. I assume you managed to reset the power manager? Did you try pulling out the PRAM battery?

[reader50]

Oh, ditto on the battery especially. Many Macs will not boot if the PRAM battery is dead. Pull it and check with a volt meter.

[BoulderDash]

Hey there,
I think that I'm going to replace the PRAM Battery and see if that does the trick. Since I do not happen to have a volt meter and spare PRAM Batteries are roughly $2.00... I'm going to buy one tomorrow and see how it goes.

I removed the PRAM Battery using this handy guide from iFixit.

Thanks again and I'll report tomorrow,
BD

P.S. Waragainstsleep: Using Apple's iMac G5: Troubleshooting when your computer won't turn on workflow leads me to steps that indicate "Your logic board needs to be replaced." But, maybe it's the PRAM Battery that causes the responses that lead me to that conclusion. Thanks!