Everything Apple (the Mac heads thread)

Jono, thanks, but i might just smash it up with a hammer

Murts, are you sure? It's specialist material

I will hijack this thread too as my g5 quad dies after 10 mins on.
I can't tell if the wrongness is on the monitor or the mac and i dont have a spare monitr to test it.
I think that it can be the video card but I am not sure...

Jono, thanks, but i might just smash it up with a hammer

Murts, are you sure? It's specialist material

hell yeah!

might delete some of it

HD's litter my house and make fantastic paper weights.

Destroy the thing if you're never going to use it. A big fuck off huge magnet should help.

Sound's like the other G5 might have a graphics card error.

If you can borrow another graphics card, or you're brave enough to flash a PC based ATI graphics card, that will be a tenth of the price.

Most likely AGP graphics

I will hijack this thread too as my g5 quad dies after 10 mins on.
I can't tell if the wrongness is on the monitor or the mac and i dont have a spare monitr to test it.
I think that it can be the video card but I am not sure...

Overheating???

i don't know, it was working ok for 5 years and this happened from one day to the other

gotta G5 at work, that the fan weny nuts, then it died. apparently a motherboard problem too.

mine make a noise like an airplane

my laptop does too

murtle, this one has a raptor 150gb hd that you can have if you know how to take it our from the machine. i am going to put it on ebay to sell as spares

@ mrsmyth,

um.. whut? :P
i have a back up of the work, the hd is fine and working in another machine that i'm on right now.
the troublesome G5 won't even get to the logo screen. tips? in laymans terms of course. :D

@tika, any pr0n on it?

Tika: If your Mac works for 10 minutes (when left idle) and then dies, then you just need a new graphics card.

If it works for more random periods of time (and immediately dies when trying to do strenuous tasks) then it's likely an over-heating or logic board problem... you could try upping the fan speeds with some software hacks to see if you can improve anything, but it's probably a lost cause.

at matt
did you try and restart from the system cd?

thanks jono, in the end i bought a new computer but now i am moving and need to get rid of it

Macs... they just work

@ tika

not yet. i tried other hd's. dubious since it doesn't even get past the POST.

Matt, put your install disk in the drive (drive should open/close as normal when powered on), then turn the Mac off and on again, hold down the c key as it's booting/turning on until a welcome screen appears* (you've just booted from the CD rather than your HD), then run hardware test from the utilities menu.

• Alternatively hold down the option/alt key and then "select a volume to boot from" (a CD will appear next to your HD, click that).
  
  

With a bit of luck you'll get a diagnostic before the Mac dies again, maybe with a lot of luck.

@fakenger. they work. this was a late 2004 mac, first hiccup. my 2004 pc died a looooong time ago.

cheers jono/tika. i'll try it, just need to remember to bring in the disks.

Oldie but a goldie, sometimes works.
Restart holding down Alt+cmd+P+R until start up chimes twice.
If you knew that already, I'll get me coat;-)

i tried but don't think i did it right. will try again.

Now that Macs install OS updates outside of the OS environment and adjust permissions dynamically you will hardly ever have to reset PRAM (perhaps when swapping out hardware) or user permissions (only if you dick about with software hacks) ever again.

whut? jono, are you drink?

Matt - yeah, sorry. Just seemed strange that so many people had problems on the same day.

If you can't boot up your old machine from the disks, you could try booting it from your new machine.
Connect the two with a firewire cable
Boot the new machine normally
Boot the old machine while holding down the T

If you're not even getting to the boot screen, it's probably fubar.
Good luck

ha! neat. cheers fakenger. will add it to the list of solutions to attempt in the am.