G5 pings three times, fans rev up and won't boot.

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G5 pings three times, fans rev up and won't boot.

Yesterday, while running an audio application on my G5, all of a sudden the screen started blackening from the top down in horizontal sectors. A new screen came up w/ a message about "Invalid access to memory..." and welcoming me to Open Firmware. Gave me a choice to continue booting or shut down. I shut down, did a safe boot and everything tested fine (ran Disk Utility and DiskWarrior). Restarted and trashed the preferences file for the audio app, generated a new one and the program ran perfectly. I had one freeze on the G5 later in the day.

This morning, on first booting, the desktop appeared and instantly a thin black horizontal bar containing white repeated characters popped up near the top right of the screen followed by the same thing near top left. G5 froze and I had to power down. Now when I try to boot up, the G5 pings three times within about 10" of pressing the power button, the fans rev up really high and I have to manually power down. Tried unplugging all peripherals, unplugging the G5 and resetting the SMU button, but no change. Any ideas, anyone?

G5 PowerMac 2.3 GHz dual processor

Tiger (OS X 10.4.11)

Two internal 750 GB drives

One external 2 TB backup

Posted on Jun 20, 2014 8:14 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

85,366 points

Jun 20, 2014 8:20 AM in response to stopmotion

Your RAM banks have gone bad. See this article:

Power On Self-Test Beep Definition - Part 2

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Answer 2

stopmotion Author

Level 1

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Jun 20, 2014 8:45 AM in response to a brody

Thank you. Read up on what you alerted me to and am going to try reseating the RAM.

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Answer 3

stopmotion Author

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Jun 20, 2014 9:56 AM in response to a brody

Reseating the RAM did not work. Tried it several times. Sometimes I didn't hear the beeps and I thought it was going to boot but then the fans would start revving up and I had to power down. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.

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Answer 4

a brody

Level 10

85,366 points

Jun 20, 2014 10:35 AM in response to stopmotion

When the banks have gone bad, you have to replace the complete logic board.

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Answer 5

stopmotion Author

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Jun 20, 2014 10:46 AM in response to a brody

That's what I figured from what I've been reading. Will have to see what the cost might be and if it's a worthwhile investment considering the age of the computer.

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Answer 6

kahjot

Level 4

2,469 points

Jun 21, 2014 9:04 AM in response to stopmotion

stopmotion wrote:

That's what I figured from what I've been reading. Will have to see what the cost might be and if it's a worthwhile investment considering the age of the computer.

You can get a first-gen Mac Pro on eBay for around $300. It can run OS 10.4 through 10.7. Something to consider, depending on the cost of a logic board and the hassle of replacing it. You transfer your existing drives, as long as you have a spare external drive. You would clone your G5 drives to the external drive as disk images, then move the G5 drives to the Mac Pro, re-format them GUID, and clone back the contents from the disk images on the external. I did this recently when I retired my G5.

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Answer 7

stopmotion Author

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Jun 21, 2014 11:27 AM in response to kahjot

Thanks so much. Your suggestion is definitely something to consider and I will keep it in mind. And thanks for outlining the steps involved in transferring drives from the G5 to the Mac Pro. But as enthusiastic as you were over my considering upgrading to a 3.2GHz quad 2012 Mac Pro, I'm leaning more toward taking the plunge and moving in that direction.

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Answer 8

kahjot

Level 4

2,469 points

Jun 21, 2014 12:07 PM in response to stopmotion

The early Mac Pro makes sense if you are on a very tight budget. Getting a refurb 2012 is certainly preferable, especially since it can run 10.6.8, to handle any legacy apps you need/want to run. I still have a few of those.

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Answer 9

stopmotion Author

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Jun 21, 2014 1:35 PM in response to kahjot

Yes, it is very important to me that the new machine be able to handle my legacy apps.

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