[macdaddy319]

I have a '99 powermac g4 I think it's a 400mhz with 768 ram and a 12gb hd. It's been crapped out on me since thanksgiving I think, but I think it's time to either make it useful or liberate some desk space. Here's what happens when i turned it on when the problem started: I was using it and it froze, I restarted it by unplugging an replugging it. turned it on: mac sound, happy mac, white apple, blue apple image(not my desktop) and then it just spun the rainbow till I unplugged it, powerbutton non-responsive. I tried several times still same, I also tried taking out the extra hd's and all the ram and then one thing at a time as well. after doing all that i tried restarting a few times and then randomly it gave me no video output, the display automatically went to sleep so it knows its connected and i get a very loud, very staticy mac chime and everything spins up as normal. oh Im running 10.4.11 btw. I tried popping in the install disk for OSx and OS9 and nothing at all. anyone have anything like this or have an idea to fix it i appreciate it. thanks---Seth

[Taskiss]

With a system that old and the symptoms you described (issues all over the map), the first thing I'd suspect was the power supply...just because that's the first thing to check, really.

[Bill M]

What about the motherboard's battery?
Have you tried pressing the CUDA reset button?

[scratt]

Either PSU, or perhaps logic board / internal connections. Plugging and unplugging stuff could have affected connections.

We have one of the very early G3 laptops that does similar stuff. It will fire up for a while, and then at some point just freeze. Poor thing.

There comes a point when you need to wrap them in a soft piece of cloth and put them to sleep forever. *sniff*

[PB PM]

Its also possible, that due to age the thermal paste on the CPU is all dried up, thus leading to it overheating and locking up. I know the G4s had the thermal pad on the heatsink, but I know some also had paste. Its worth a look.