Chosen Solution
Hi - So I’ve been trying to be “green” in the recent year, and needed an extra desktop. Picked up a 2.0GHz Dual Core (2005) and was told it booted to “?” No such luck… got it home and it doesn’t even light up the front switch (ie, no light, no sounds, nothing). Problem Hierarchy (things to inspect in this order?)
- PRAM/SMU Battery
- Front bus switch
- Power Supply
- Logic Board Is this correct? It’s been awhile since I’ve worked on this model. Thanks Jason PS - I referenced this post, but want more info. Thanks! Why won’t my G5 boot?
Open it up, and check the connections from the power supply to the motherboard. Then, remove the graphics card and clean the contacts, with a pencil eraser (On PowerPC Macs, or at least PowerMac G4s they won’t turn on if the graphics card can’t be found.) If that doesn’t do it, try this, its the fix that seems to fix my PowerMac G4 MDD when it gets a little flaky. Make sure it’s plugged in, then remove the graphics card. Put the plastic air shield back in, and press the power button. (It shouldn’t turn on) Then while it’s still plugged in, put the graphics card. If it has anything in common with my PowerMac G4, it should turn on if the second the graphics card is put in. If it doesn’t, put the thing back together, then try ant turn it on. If you still have no success, try and reset the PMU. Hold the power button down for about 10 seconds. If you still have no luck, you may have a dead power supply, of logic board.
I would not do as Chris says and put the graphics card hot. Do the PRAM battery first. Reseating the graphics card is a good idea but not hot. Your hierarchy chart appears correct. If the former user was getting a question mark, and he probably was, because he knew about it, that’s because it could not find a system. Either corrupted system or, more likely a bad hard drive. After you get some power, boot up from the Optical drive with a system disk for this machine or a retail system 10.5 or less.
