Need help diagnosing Power Mac G5 1.6 issue
A friend recently gave me a late June 2004 G5 Power Mac (model A1047). They teach at a local college and the school gave it to them when they upgraded their equipment. The school cleaned it off, gave it to them, and they brought it home. However, they never bothered to set it up, so I am the first person to have put it together and plugged it in since two years ago.
Unfortunately, instead of having a nice chime and wecome screen, the screen remained blank. Though the fans turn on and it sounds like something is happening with the hard drive for a few moments, there is no LED light on the power button and no chime. After about 20 secs or so, the fans start to speed up considerably.
According to my friend, they used the computer right before school IT cleaned it, so it was working before then. Not sure of RAM or hard drive specs as I have not been able to boot the machine to determine them.
I'm hoping someone here can give me guidance on how to tackle the diagnosis on this. The last time I used a Mac is when I had a Performa back in 1995 or so.
Here's a list of things I have noticed or tried so far:
- No LED lights are lit on the logic board unless the plastic air deflector is removed, in which case one of the lights turns red.
- Have replaced the PRAM battery, but still can not reset the PRAM (CMD-OPT-p-r has no effect).
- Have unseated and reseated the two RAM sticks. Even if I remove the RAM and turn on the computer, I still do not get the warning chimes.
- Have removed and reseated the video card.
- Have pressed the SMU button.
- Power is going to the monitor (power light is on).
- Have tried the hair dryer trick around the RAM banks but it had no effect (though it is possible the hair dryer wasn't hot enough).
I do not have extra RAM or an extra video card available to test with. And I would prefer not to gamble on the purchase of either unless necessary.
What should be my next steps in diagnosis? Have I missed any common sense tactics here? For ex., could a bad keyboard be the reason for the inability to reset PRAM, or would the chime still be necessary to make that work? Are there other areas than the memory banks where heat should be applied?
Any suggestions are greatly appreciative as I would really love to make this machine work. But given its age, I would not want to go broke doing so.
Many thanks,
Stuart
PowerMac