emac dead

G'day pecaloca,

Does the computer respond at all when you press the on/power button?

Have you ever replaced the 3 volt PRAM battery inside the computer?

Have you recently added new RAM, or other devices/etc?

Has the computer been reliable up til now? Any other issues?

Cheers

cosmic

Check the normal things first, like making sure the internal battery is working still. If nothing fixes it, you might have bad capacitors. My eMac developed this problem about a month ago where it would just start freezing and the only way to get it to work again is to hard reset it. Turns out a few of the capacitors are bulging inside, and since a lot of eMacs had this problem, we just ordered new capacitors and are going to replace them. Well, my dad is. I suck at hardware repairs 😀

Anyway, check inside the RAM area to the bottom right of the RAM slots and those two little cans on the board are capacitors. If they're leaking brown or bulging, that is definitely your problem. If you have good experience with soldering, then figure out how to take the thing apart (it's a pain in the ***, trust me) and replace them. If not, try to find someone with experience. Or buy a new board (may be VERY expensive though).

Best of luck.

You don't mention the variant of your eMac. The capacitor issues to which Gavin refers only affects eMacs with USB 2.0 Logic boards and 1G and 1.25 G processors. Apple once had a Repair Extension Program (REP) that covered the repairs but it officially expired about 15 months ago. Affected computers were supposed to fall in these ranges of serial numbers:

• G8412xxxxxx- G8520xxxxxx
• YM412xxxxxx - YM520xxxxxx
• VM440xxxxxx - VM516xxxxxx

You can find the serial number by manually opening the optical drive door and looking on a sticker there, like this:

!http://km.support.apple.com/library/APPLE/APPLECARE ALLGEOS/HT2395/863252.jpg!

If your serial number starts with "R" or "RM." your computer is a facory refurb and the list of serial numbers will not help.

NOTE: Don't post your serial number here--just say if you computer falls within on of the affected ranges.

Are you in the United States? If so, post back as there may be an alternate path. If you are in the Pacific Northwest, there is a further lower-cost option to a full logic board replacement, which is hardly cost-effective for an 8-year old eMac.