stopmotion

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

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  • by a brody,Helpful

    a brody a brody Jun 20, 2014 8:20 AM in response to stopmotion
    Level 9 (66,875 points)
    Classic Mac OS
    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

  • by stopmotion,

    stopmotion stopmotion Jun 20, 2014 8:45 AM in response to a brody
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    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.

  • by stopmotion,

    stopmotion stopmotion Jun 20, 2014 9:56 AM in response to a brody
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    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.

  • by a brody,

    a brody a brody Jun 20, 2014 10:35 AM in response to stopmotion
    Level 9 (66,875 points)
    Classic Mac OS
    Jun 20, 2014 10:35 AM in response to stopmotion

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

  • by stopmotion,

    stopmotion stopmotion Jun 20, 2014 10:46 AM in response to a brody
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    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.

  • by kahjot,

    kahjot kahjot Jun 21, 2014 9:04 AM in response to stopmotion
    Level 4 (1,347 points)
    Desktops
    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.

  • by stopmotion,

    stopmotion stopmotion Jun 21, 2014 11:27 AM in response to kahjot
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    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.

  • by kahjot,Helpful

    kahjot kahjot Jun 21, 2014 12:07 PM in response to stopmotion
    Level 4 (1,347 points)
    Desktops
    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.

  • by stopmotion,

    stopmotion stopmotion Jun 21, 2014 1:35 PM in response to kahjot
    Level 1 (4 points)
    Mac OS X
    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.