Help, my 20th Anniversary Mac is dead

Question

Level 5

5,281 points

Help, my 20th Anniversary Mac is dead

Hi all,

I have a 20th Anniversary Mac. It was working great, with 128MB of RAM and a 400MHz G3 card, but a tiny 300MB HD. Last night, I pulled the small hard drive in favor of an IBM 3.2GB drive. Now, when I power on the TAM, I get the chime and fan, but no HD spinup, green light, or display on the LCD. I tried pulling everything and reseating it, CUDA reset, and it won't take a PRAM reset.

The PRAM battery is bad, but all it would take before was turning it off and back on again via the back switch to get it to boot. Now, that doesn't work.

Is it dead??

Thanks guys,
Kyle-

MacBook Pro, iPad 3G, Mac OS X (10.6.5), many vintage models

Posted on Feb 13, 2011 1:24 PM

Reply

Answer 1

Feb 13, 2011 3:24 PM in response to Kyle Koerner

The PRAM battery is bad

The problem is that you completely dropped the power when the battery was very weak.

Turning it on and off works for a while, and sometimes does not work any more. You could try removing the battery entirely. That is a 4.5 Volt long-life alkaline battery, Ray-O-Vac 840, 841 or equivalent. Available from many Mac-centric dealers for under US$10. You can build one from three AA batteries in a holder with the clip from the old battery, but beware of battery leakage if it becomes discharged.

Reply

Answer 2

Kyle Koerner Author

Level 5

5,281 points

Feb 13, 2011 3:39 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Alright, thanks! I've never come across a Mac that wouldn't boot with a bad battery, except the LC 475.

I suppose it's worth a try.

Reply

Answer 3

Jeff

Level 6

12,058 points

Feb 13, 2011 8:39 PM in response to Kyle Koerner

At the risk of asking the obvious, did you make sure that the 3.2 GB IDE hard drive had the configuration jumper set for Master?

Reply

Answer 4

Feb 14, 2011 5:38 AM in response to Kyle Koerner

Check this site for battery part numbers and sources. Mac PRAM, NVRAM, CUDA/PMU & Battery Tutorial

 Cheers, Tom 😉

Reply

Answer 5

Feb 15, 2011 9:57 PM in response to Kyle Koerner

Kyle,

See if you can find an old external SCSI CD-ROM drive. Pull the optical drive and put in some old SCSI drive. Make a backup system drive out of it. Then when you change out any internal drive, you can boot from the external drive and use that Drive Setup to configure the new drive.

Jim

Reply

Answer 6

Feb 16, 2011 4:44 AM in response to Appaloosa mac man

I still have some working SCSI Hard Drive enclosures here on the East coast US. Click on my name and Email me if you need one.

Reply