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G4 Cube randomly shuts down/sleeps, starts up

I just got a G4 Cube from a friend that is exhibiting some very odd symptoms. The Cube is completely stock (with the exception that I replaced the PRAM battery, see below), and is the 450Mhz DVD-ROM model.

What it will do is occasionally, and for no apparent reason, will suddenly shut down. This happens completely randomly, and appears to NOT depend on what I'm doing with the computer at any particular moment. Sometimes it doesn't even make it through a complete boot cycle before it shuts down; other times, it boots up and appears to work fine, only to suddenly shut down hours (or even days) later.

At first I thought maybe it was overheating (as I have heard that the Cube is notorious for heat problems); however, this appears to not be the case. When the machine suddenly shuts down, both the Cube itself as well as the power supply do not feel noticably hot to the touch. Also, it has remained up through obviously processor intensive tasks. (For example, the other day I was playing Starcraft, and basically finished the entire Terran campaign and it didn't even bat an eyelash, but, hours later, after the machine had sat idle, I went to fire up Safari to browse a website only to have it suddenly shut down.)

Also, at least once, the machine has mysteriously STARTED UP on its own. I always shut down the machine before leaving for work in the morning, but one day I came back home to find that the machine had somehow, mysteriously STARTED UP while I was gone. Nobody was home all day, and we don't have any small animals that might have accidentally brushed up against the power switch. (no, I haven't yet called in a Ghost Hunting team to determine whether any supernatural forces were involved, although at this point I'm beginning to wonder if that may not be a bad idea...)

Anyway, like I said before, the machine was stock, except when it came to me, the PRAM battery was obviously dead (I got the "your clock is set before 1970" message on bootup). The mysterious shutdown problems started occurring right away, so I thought maybe the PRAM had gotten corrupted and was causing weird things to happen. So I obtained a replacement PRAM battery and installed it myself (yes, I observed proper static discharge precautions). While I was in there, I hit the CUDA switch for good measure. Unfortunately this didn't help.

Does anybody have any ideas as to what this might be? Flaky power supply or voltage regulator? Maybe even a bad power switch? Your help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

MacBook Pro Core 2 Duo (Feb 2008, Penryn) 2.4GHz, Mac mini G4/1.42GHz, Mac OS X (10.5.2), Time Capsule, AirPort Express (802.11n), Samsung ML-2510, HP Color LsrJet CM1015

Posted on Aug 29, 2008 9:40 AM

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Aug 29, 2008 5:24 PM in response to dburr

What version of the Mac OS is the Power Mac G4 Cube currently running? If you haven't already done so you might want to zap the PRAM via Command/Apple Option+PR immediately after the Mac bongs. If that doesn't help the next thing I would try is resetting the NVRAM by pressing Command/Apple Option+NV immediately after the Mac bongs.

For both troubleshooting procedures I would recommend letting the Mac bong four additional times before releasing the keys to let it continue starting up normally.
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Aug 31, 2008 3:50 AM in response to George Bishopric

If you want your G4 Cube to start from a 10.4.X partition you should hold down X as the G4 Cube is starting up to tell it you want to boot to your Mac OS X partition on your hard drive. If that doesn't work you could also try holding down the Option key: then use the arrow keys on your keyboard to select your bootable Mac OS X partition & press enter to tell your G4 Cube to boot from it.
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Aug 31, 2008 7:11 PM in response to Craigwd_2000

The illustration in this article, and the explanation provided can be very helpful. The code is in ROM, so the blank screen will come up in Macs with this feature, even if no bootable media are available.

HT1310- Startup Manager: How to select a startup volume (illustrated)

Startup Manager allows you to temporarily start up from an arbitrary Volume.
Later, use:
System Preferences > Startup Disk
to set the "permanent" Startup Volume.

Message was edited by: Grant Bennet-Alder
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Oct 2, 2008 5:53 AM in response to Bob K-AZ

Here's a link to the Apple Knowledge Base Article containing the G4 Cube Firmware Update: http://tinyurl.com/4s3mfh. There's also a Firmware Update for the Power Mac G4 Cube's slot loading DVD-ROM drive. Here's a link to the Apple Knowledge Base Article about that: http://tinyurl.com/3hvle3.
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Oct 26, 2008 12:13 PM in response to Craigwd_2000

Update: I've managed to find yet another Apple official slot loading DVD-ROM drive firmware updater for the Power Mac G4 Cube. It seems Apple used two different models of slot loading Matshita DVD-ROM drives in that particular model of Power Mac. Here's a link to the other Firmware Updater Apple Knowledge Base Article: http://tinyurl.com/9rzvw.

I also found another Mac OS 9 Update for the Power Mac G4 called Hard Drive Update 1. Here's a link to the relevant Knowledge Base Article: http://tinyurl.com/36t4v7.
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G4 Cube randomly shuts down/sleeps, starts up

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