Black Screen on PowerMac G4

[cre8tive matt]

Hi I'm new to these forums. Hoping someone on here has had a similar issue, knows how to fix my problem.

My PowerMac G4 Mirror Door Drive as been working fine. Installed new 500GB hardrive around 4months ago, new power cord, power supply 6months to a year ago. I have an external display with clear frame around

I had it on the other day and the screen went black. I can't get it to do anything now. When I start it I hear the chimes, light on monitor will turn on, sounds like it begins to boot up but nothing else. I tried resetting the PMU but it didn't fix the problem. I tried resetting the the PRAM but it seems it won't even respond to to any button selections, it won't even start in safe mode. That could possibly because I unplugged the keyboard and plugged back in so perhaps it is not reading the keyboard? (I sometimes have to go through the sequence of getting the computer to recognize the keyboard by pressing the button to the left of the shift key etc. because it is not an official apple keyboard, is a kensington)

Asked a tech on here and they had me try removing the battery and also starting up from hardware test disc that came with the computer. No go or either of those options.

I have not tried other monitors on this computer but I have tried this monitor on other computers and it works fine.

Is there anything else you would suggest? Could it be the graphics card? REALLY hope someone can help... I'm a designer and this no computer at home thing is not good. Thanks in advance or any help!!

 

[djackmac]

Not much you can do without a test video card. But you can try reseating RAM first. Then try to run on one chip at a time in all different slots to rule out if its a RAM issue or a bad slot on the logic board. While you are in there may want to try and reseat the vidoe card.

 

[cre8tive matt]

thanks! sorry but i'm not too good at the technical stuff... can you be more specific when you say run on one chip at a time?

 

[djackmac]

thanks! sorry but i'm not too good at the technical stuff... can you be more specific when you say run on one chip at a time?

You probably have more than one RAM chip installed in the machine since most G4 towers have 4 RAM slots. Try booting with one chip at a time to see if one of the chips is causing the issue. Also if you are not seeing any results using the same RAM slot, then try the three remaining slots. But if you aren't capable or don't see the logic in what I'm recommending you should have a pro look at it because otherwise you may just create more problems that could cost more to repair.