[rescue] Macintosh G5 troubleshooting

[Rick Hamell]

On 4/11/10 7:38 PM, Mr Ian Primus wrote:
> Well, after my G4 died, I did a bit of searching on Craigslist and turned up a G5... Even though I was able to resurrect my beloved dual G4 with a single replacement capacitor, I decided to go out on a limb and buy a known-broken G5. The only consolation was that it was cheap, and it looks cool. It's a dual 1.8, 512mb RAM.
>
> I got it home, cursed the fact that Apple uses stupid video connectors, found a DVI-VGA adapter and powered up the computer. I get one beep, then the Apple  chime, and... it dumped me into Open Firmware. I am able to boot from the Apple Hardware Test CD by typing mac-boot at the OF prompt, and the system passes the test with no errors. Booting from an operating system CD results in the Apple logo screen with the spinning lines and it hangs there forever.
>
> I've tried swapping RAM for some known good RAM from my PC, and get the same symptoms.
>
> It seems odd that it would pass the hardware test fine, but then be unable to load the OS installer disc. And what does the one beep mean? Everything I can find points to the RAM, but I've swapped that.
>
> It would be nice to get this working, but it's hardly a priority, since I've gotten my G4 running again.
>
> If anything, I've got one heck of a cool looking doorstop.

If it's going into Open Firmware still, try:

reset-nvram
reset-all

It's a long shot but I've seen it fix otherwise unusable machines. You 
might also replace the hard drive and then do those same commands again. 
I had a batch three that were fixed that way.


-- 
Rick Hamell

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