iMac died. Ideas?

Damrod

Damrod

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So, I wanted to reactivate my old bondi-blue iMac to become a HD recorder for my bands rehersal room. I had it running earlier this week to see if the OS is clean etc. Now I wanted to transfer some music from my G4 to the iMac, turned it on, and during the OS X progress bar, it just died. No sign of life anymore. Pressing the power button to turn it on again does not do anything. Nada.

So, my question: Any idea what I could check to see if it's really dead? Otherwise I will rip the usable parts out (HDD etc) and give away the rest.

Thanks in advance for your imput :)
 
You might want to replace the clock (Pram) battery if it's been sitting for some time. It's on the Logic Board.
 
Could that prevent it from booting alltogether? I only know that the system mourns if the battery is getting low as the date is not kept straight and always resets.
 
Yes, it can keep it from booting if it's dead.

If the machine has been unplugged for some time, leave it plugged in for 24hrs and see if it will boot. If not, I would try the battery.
 
Verify that the AC cord's female plug is fully inserted into the iMac's socket, and the AC male end is fully inserted into the AC outlet.
 
Sounds exactly like what happened to my iMac. If it is the same problem, you'll be able to repeat the boot-up-and-die process by briefly unplugging the machine. Not much use though, since it'll just die again a few seconds after the startup chime. My guess is that the power supply is damaged and can no longer power your entire system, so everything goes kaput around when the HD needs to kick into high gear. That's what happened to my iMac.

I managed to revive my iMac by extracting its internal HD. Without the HD, the power supply is able to keep the whole thing up and running. I can now use it normally if I hook up an external FireWire HD (I converted my iMac's internal HD to an external one using a FireWire HD case). Not the best of solutions, but if the alternative is trashing the machine, it's certainly worth a shot.

I imagine you could also get the power supply replaced by an Apple service provider. I don't know what it would cost, but it would probably be impractical for such an old machine. You could probably get a more powerful used machine for cheaper than any repair would be.
 
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