Screwy Power Mac G4

February 23, 2006 9:41 AM

I acquired a secondhand Power Mac G4 Dual 867MHz MDD a few days ago, but it's been acting a little weird.

- At startup, you either get a stuttering, drawn-out startup chime and then it won't find a startup drive, or a perfect startup chime and the computer runs fine thereafter.
- Opening or closing the side door with it switched on causes the power to cut out - this shouldn't happen, right?
- The Combo drive seems to have died in the time I've had it. It at least opened and closed the first day I had it (I didn't test it any further), now it isn't even recognised, even in another computer.
- It came with a USB 2.0 PCI card installed, but until I removed it there were USB-related kernel panics at the start of most boots.

Anyone know what's wrong with this thing?

posted by cillit bang to computers & internet (4 comments total)

How clean is it inside? Some of these issues sound like those I've experienced with dirty machines or ones where bits (screws, etc) were on the rampage inside.
posted by wackybrit at 9:59 AM on February 23, 2006

That sounds plausible enough. I've just taken it apart enough to get the motherboard out, and it's been in a much better mood since I put it back together. I've even got the USB 2.0 card back in.

I'm not actually sure I found any loose screws, or if I lost them taking it apart, but whatever, it seems to have worked. Thanks.
posted by cillit bang at 7:06 PM on February 23, 2006

I guess I'm a bit late to this game, but I've had problems like this (in my dualie MDD mac, no less) with shorting 4-connector power cords, both to the video card and to hard disks.

Make sure the fan's running correctly, too (and if this was never upgraded with the $20 'quiet fan' option, you may wish to look into that; these are the loudest, most annoying Macs ever built, out of the box.)
posted by ikkyu2 at 11:30 PM on February 23, 2006

You can replace the Combo drive with any recent Pioneer DVD-RW drive. I suggest the DVR-109 or DVR-110. It should work out of the box, running 10.4.x. - about US$40

If you really want USB2.0, you could buy another PCI USB2.0 card from a PC store. - US$10

I'd also suggest getting a new hard drive for it, but only because I don't trust hard drives for more than 24 months...
posted by theducks at 12:43 AM on February 24, 2006