iMac G5 freeze followed by 3 dreaded beeps on next power on

[ssray23]

I have a iMac G5, which I purchased very recently
4 days old to be precise.

On Saturday. I faced somnething which gave me a little scare
I was listening to iTunes when suddenly the music stopped.
I saw the whole screen was locked up. No mouse pointer even.
Being relatively new to Macs, I hard booted by pressing the Power button
And the next thing I face is 3-4 louds beeps .. and no video was coming at all!! Could hear the fan was turning real hard .....

Feeling helpless .. I took the unit to Apple Store
They opened the unit.. but it worked fine there !!!
They told me that its related to RAM .. i.e, Mac did not detect RAM



I want to know what is the problem?
I have 1 GB of RAM installed.
And Mac says its cant find RAM!!!

It worked perfectly for 3 days till Saturday, untill those dreaded beeps!!

I want to know what precations should I take so that I can prevent these things from recurring again

To add, I have one USB ext HDD, one Firewire 400 Ext HDD and one Logitech Wireless Mouse and keyborard connected to my Mac always.

I have Tiger 10.4.1.

Thanks in advance
Suddha Satta Ray

 

[riccbhard]

Did it try to go to sleep with the external HD connected? That can cause sleep problems and crashes.

This may help:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58442

 

[ssray23]

yes ....
It's always connected .... but it always used to go to sleep (after 15 mins. i think) with two external HDDs connected .. even before the crash ...

 

[HateEternal]

Did you install the ram or is it apple ram?

 

[ssray23]

I bought it from a Apple Authorized reseller and they installed one extra 512 MB module for me before shipping.

 

[bobw]

3 beeps = bad ram