Ping-pong ball sound and non-booting

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Level 1

4 points

Ping-pong ball sound and non-booting

Whilst browsing on Safari today, my iMac G3 500Mhz intermittently started rattling with a sortof ping-pong ball noise (as if a ball was bouncing around inside.....) coming from the lower left of the machine towards the front.
Safari froze, and so did Finder, there was no force quit available therefore I turned the machine off by holding the power button.

When I try to turn the iMac back on, the ping-pong ball sound occurs straight after the chime, the mac makes some other strange noises like a whining, the screen goes black then ping-pong sound again, and finally to the folder icon with the alternating Finder and question mark flashing.

I also tried booting into Target Disk Mode using my iBook G3 (running OSX 10.3.9 as well) to see if I could recover important work, however the screen remains black and power cuts out after a few seconds after holding the T key. Without trying TDM the mac goes back to normal flashing icons.

Also, I used the iMac Hardware Test cd, but the extended test returned no faults at all, so my earlier suspicions of a hard drive fail do not seem as likely.

Could there be a physical problem inside, eg a loose component shorting out connections? I unplugged everything and turned the Mac over a few times but nothing seemed to rattle at all..

I do not think it could be the power supply at fault, as it has been replaced by Apple a few months back, and a faulty power unit wouldn't have let me start-up to the flashing icons.

Does anybody have any suggestions, or any way to at least recover the data off the hard drive?

Thank you

iMac G3 500 Mhz, Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Posted on Jun 12, 2006 9:45 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Strider

Level 6

14,600 points

Jun 12, 2006 3:32 PM in response to Jonny Smith

I've heard of similar symptoms and it always turned out to be a hard drive that just died. I don't know what the apple ahrdware test CD actually tests, so I can't really comment on those results.

If it is a dead hard drive, it might be difficult to get your data back without some expense. There are shops that can get data off of dead drives, but its really expensive. If all else fails, you could try putting the drive in the freezer for a little while, then popping it into an external case (this all assumes you've replaced the drive at this point). Sometimes the freezer will give you a window where you can get data off of the drive. Or so I've gathered from IT professionals.

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Answer 2

Jonny Smith Author

Level 1

4 points

Jun 13, 2006 12:47 AM in response to Strider

Using your suggestion about the freezer, could I (after freezing) connect the drive up to my Windows + Linux PC, I guess Linux would be able to read the HFS or HFS+ or whatever format my drive is?

If not, I will probably send the drive off for data recovery.

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Answer 3

Ron JACKLE

Level 7

33,445 points

Jun 13, 2006 2:22 AM in response to Jonny Smith

Jonny Smith...

I would first replace the HD. Attempting to boot it is the worse thing for it right now. The recovery process should be done out of the computer via FW enclosure or professional data Recovery Service.

+

I would avoid the freezer deal at all costs as some temperature extremes can make matters worse, such as;

Condensation in bringing out from the cold would need 24 hours to stabilize. I practice this in situations in of inclimate weather when moving my electronic equipment around. A + -10 degree F differential is my condensation rule of thumb from point A to B.

While already cold there is sufficient moisture to ice up the platters making it easy to cause immediate head damage.

Electrical "poly or film" data ribbons can suddenly break internal connections from within them.

Anyway- Murphy's Law, is against you. ("Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.)

...Ron

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