iMac G3 Problem Rates

[Scott Baret]

What have you folks witnessed going wrong on G3 iMacs the most?

It seems that the power buttons get stuck a lot on the ones we've had to deal with, the tray-loading CD-ROMs are unreliable, and the video conks out a lot on the slot loaders.

How about all of you techs out there? What have you seen? And are the Ruby and Sage models really that rare?

 

[Patrickool93]

The processor card died on my first tray loader than the CD-ROM went on my second one... I really like the sage iMacs...

 

[phreakout]

The PAV Board (Power Analog Video) quits working due to overheating, whether its a tray-loading or slot-loading. That's been my experience in fixing them.

73s 8)

 

[tomlee59]

Cooked flybacks. Of about a half dozen iMacs that I've inherited (because they're toast, natch), all but one had cooked flybacks. That's a lousy average.

 

[John8520]

On our iMac G3/600, the CD drive had to be replaced once (eventually it just stopped attempting to read disks, and just spit everything out), then the power button would get jammed, then eventually the screen got a very heavy magenta tint and then the shape of the screen went all wacko. Then the HDD died. Not really my favorite mac, thats for sure...

 

[Quadraman]

It makes you wonder why so many people consider the the bondi blue era as the gold old days.

 

[Scott Baret]

I actually just brought a Bondi in off the street (literally) a half hour ago and it's actually making me nostalgic, since you mention the good old days! I remember how much I wanted one in middle school (I was in sixth grade in 1998-1999 when they were new). Just like the IIci, good things come to those who wait...I waited 15 years to get a IIci and now nine years later I get a bondi--with a working CD and 96MB RAM!

 

[equill]

Tomlee59's post reflects one aspect of the matter, made to appear worse because a number of iMacs from (possibly) different environments have been concentrated into one arrival point. I don't contest the experience, because Tom has reported what he has found.

I have two Summer 2000 (bought new) and two Summer 2001 (bought near-new/unused) iMacs. They are always-on. They also have their rear feet elevated 18mm (0.75in) on timber, and 40mm in one case to keep its screen face vertical in a rack. Their tops are clear, or have no horizontal surface closer than 55mm above them. Their exit air is just perceptibly warmer than that from an actively ventilated Mac. Failure rate, other than the logic board of one new one three weeks after purchase, is nil. This is probably also an atypical experience. I don't know. Perhaps it illustrates that ventilation can work wonders.

de

 

[tomlee59]

I'm sure that ventilation makes a *huge* difference. One of the toasted imacs I received had died after its owner tossed her coat onto it without thinking that it would be a bad idea. When she retrieved her coat an hour or so later, the imac was dead.

As equill said, my data must be taken with a grain of salt because stuff usually finds its way to me only after it's been declared hopeless. That all but guarantees that I'll see a very skewed sample. That said, the over-representation of bad flybacks might be interpreted as reflecting a vulnerable aspect of the imac's design, nonetheless.

 

[equill]

It is just barely understandable that Apple would continue to use vulnerable parts (as must have been apparent at the latest shortly after the release of the slot-loaders) if they had in stock a zillion of parts that had been built or bought to a specification. I have toyed for years, because of those iMacs' reputation, with the idea of a ducted active exhaust system with intakes just over the handle area of each iMac. Given no trouble, however, the project has lapsed into the 'round tuit' basket.

If my acknowledgment of the iMacs' virtues above is now rewarded by their prompt failure, you may all be assured that I shall be passing around the hat for some tokens of your sympathy (preferably folding rather than coin). I have recently replaced two of their HDDs with 40GB 7200rpm Seagate units. Very nice performance, too. Time will show what extra heat load that will generate.

de

 

[Quadraman]

It is just barely understandable that Apple would continue to use vulnerable parts (as must have been apparent at the latest shortly after the release of the slot-loaders) if they had in stock a zillion of parts that had been built or bought to a specification. I have toyed for years, because of those iMacs' reputation, with the idea of a ducted active exhaust system with intakes just over the handle area of each iMac. Given no trouble, however, the project has lapsed into the 'round tuit' basket.
If my acknowledgment of the iMacs' virtues above is now rewarded by their prompt failure, you may all be assured that I shall be passing around the hat for some tokens of your sympathy (preferably folding rather than coin). I have recently replaced two of their HDDs with 40GB 7200rpm Seagate units. Very nice performance, too. Time will show what extra heat load that will generate.

de

Let's not forget that the iMac was the first new machine after the second coming of Jobs who also dictated that no cooling fans should be used in the original Mac.

 

[equill]

Let's not forget that the iMac was the first new machine after the second coming of Jobs who also dictated that no cooling fans should be used in the original Mac.

I haven't forgotten that this statement about Jobs' preference has been oft reported. What, if it is true, it argues is that the convective cooling design must be unimpeachably effective, and the componentry rated for the inevitably slower heat transfer to the convecting air. It also means that Apple must devote more attention to instruction of users in the advantages (silence, if you can hear the silence through the hard drive's noise and the CRT's crepitations) and disadvantages (need for clear space around the Mac, and preferably for some elevation of its rear to facilitate air intake).

I have no evidence that any of the above, from Jobs' preference to special emphasis by Apple on convective cooling requirements, ever existed. The original 128K-Plus machines are no exemplars for the practice of convective cooling. My 512Ke always feels (in a tactile sense) as if self-immolation is next on its list of things to do.

de

 

[phreakout]

Convection cooling designs do work, but you need to use low-powered low-heat components involved. That way, you have less chance of burnout. You'll note that a lot of machines in the 80's didn't have cooling fans on the computer because they were using 2-8 Mhz speed chips. As the frequency increases, the need for a fan is required to prevent burnout.

73s 8)

 

[LCGuy]

I'm the proud owner of a Lime iMac 333, manufactured in May 1999, which i've had since June 2000, although it was nearly new, before i had it it had only been owned by an AppleCentre and it had hardly been used.

Overall, its been a fantastic machine, and most of the parts on it, including the power supply, analog board, CRT and CD-ROM drive are all the originals. However, in January 2003, one day i went to use it and it wouldn't power on. Thankfully i managed to fix it by resetting the CUDA and replacing the nearly-dead PRAM battery. in April 2003 i had a problem with the cage part that goes above the CPU card rusting out. At about the same time this happened the 64MB SO-DIMM i had in the top slot died, and therefore i'm led to believe that a bit of rust fell on the module and shorted it when power was next applied. I'm lucky it only fell on the 64MB module.

After replacing that with the stock 32MB module, everything went smoothly until November 2004 when i attempted an upgrade from 10.2 to 10.3. The install went FUBAR about halfway through and this somehow managed to FUBARize up the Mac's Open Firmware, which was the cause for my dislike of Open Firmware based Macs. Thankfully i managed to get it going again by stripping the machine and leaving the bare logic board to sit for 48 hours without anything connected.

After that everything went smoothly until August 2006 when i went to power it up and nothing happened. No fan, no LED, no raster, no audio. Nothing. I opened it up and had a look. I have absolutely no idea how this happened, but somehow my 128MB SO-DIMM had died, and had somehow also managed to take out the SLOT it was also in, leaving me with only one working RAM slot, with a 32MB SO-DIMM. Due to the fact that i unfortunately have the extreme displeasure of living in HickVille™ where Mac stuff is rarer than hens teeth, i had no choice but to leave the machine for dead until April 2007 when I went on a holiday to Sydney. After figuring my way out of the very big and very busy airport and setting myself up at the hostel i went around to Microseconds and bought a replacment CPU and mobo (my mobo was fine but i thought i better get another one just in case, and instead of just selling me a bare mobo, they actually just sold me the entire mobo/mass storage tray assembly minus CD-ROM and HD), as well as 2 128MB SO-DIMMs for AU$110 all up. When i got home i installed it all in my iMac, and did an OS 9 install, followed by a Jaguar install on a new HD i had gotten for free. Although the Jaguar install was unsuccessful, i put in the 40GB HD i had in the iMac before it died, and it successfully booted Jaguar. Since then i've been using my iMac as my main machine like i was before it died and its been compeltely trouble-free.

On slot loading iMacs, i'm sorry but they are total crap. I did work experience at an AASP for a while and every weeek we usually had one come in, usually for heat-related problems. Dead CRTs. Dead APV boards. Dead mobos, Dead Down convertor boards. They may be fine in other countries, but these machines simply can't handle an Australian summer well at all. I know i wouldn't even think about getting one unless i had A/C. I don't even see what the problem is with having a fan anyway...my tray load iMac has a fan, as everyone knows, and its whisper quiet...all you hear is a gentle hum, which is nothing compared to my Dell Pentium 4, with its 4 cooling fans, which sounds like a Boeing 747 taking off.

 

[equill]

... I did work experience at an AASP for a while and every weeek we usually had one come in, usually for heat-related problems. Dead CRTs. Dead APV boards. Dead mobos, Dead Down convertor boards. They may be fine in other countries, but these machines simply can't handle an Australian summer well at all. I know i wouldn't even think about getting one unless i had A/C. ...

Tomlee59 made the point, above, that the dead iMacs in his possession were in his possession because they were dead. Your experience at an AASP is similar, in that you would not have seen the iMacs coming into the shop unless they were dead. A highly skewed sample, from which you extravagantly claim that all iMac slotloaders are crap. What about all the slotloading iMacs that you have never seen because they just chugged along, in the Queensland sun or no? In the iMacs' home country there are many places with summer temperatures that would leave all of Queensland but Mt Isa in the shade (metaphorically).

My skewed sample, above, of four slotloaders (I didn't even mention another two that I have, also trouble-free) that have been meticulously maintained and deliberately set up to promote ventilation, has been fault-free in the Sydney sun. I'm not convinced that the ingoing air temperature in Qld is so different from that in NSW (8.5° latitude difference) as to impel all—or even most—slotloaders in Qld to self-immolate. I should have preferred forced ventilation in my iMacs, certainly, had the choice been there. Consider though that when the Summer 2000 iMacs arrived they were the ant's pants of the time, however passé they may be considered by some to be now, and if you wanted their capabilities you accepted their disadvantages.

Your trayloader, by your own account, has had a much more varied, inventive and chequered history, its fan notwithstanding.

de

 

[madmax_2069]

I'm the proud owner of a Lime iMac 333, manufactured in May 1999, which i've had since June 2000, although it was nearly new, before i had it it had only been owned by an AppleCentre and it had hardly been used.
Overall, its been a fantastic machine, and most of the parts on it, including the power supply, analog board, CRT and CD-ROM drive are all the originals. However, in January 2003, one day i went to use it and it wouldn't power on. Thankfully i managed to fix it by resetting the CUDA and replacing the nearly-dead PRAM battery. in April 2003 i had a problem with the cage part that goes above the CPU card rusting out. At about the same time this happened the 64MB SO-DIMM i had in the top slot died, and therefore i'm led to believe that a bit of rust fell on the module and shorted it when power was next applied. I'm lucky it only fell on the 64MB module.

After replacing that with the stock 32MB module, everything went smoothly until November 2004 when i attempted an upgrade from 10.2 to 10.3. The install went FUBAR about halfway through and this somehow managed to FUBARize up the Mac's Open Firmware, which was the cause for my dislike of Open Firmware based Macs. Thankfully i managed to get it going again by stripping the machine and leaving the bare logic board to sit for 48 hours without anything connected.

After that everything went smoothly until August 2006 when i went to power it up and nothing happened. No fan, no LED, no raster, no audio. Nothing. I opened it up and had a look. I have absolutely no idea how this happened, but somehow my 128MB SO-DIMM had died, and had somehow also managed to take out the SLOT it was also in, leaving me with only one working RAM slot, with a 32MB SO-DIMM. Due to the fact that i unfortunately have the extreme displeasure of living in HickVille™ where Mac stuff is rarer than hens teeth, i had no choice but to leave the machine for dead until April 2007 when I went on a holiday to Sydney. After figuring my way out of the very big and very busy airport and setting myself up at the hostel i went around to Microseconds and bought a replacment CPU and mobo (my mobo was fine but i thought i better get another one just in case, and instead of just selling me a bare mobo, they actually just sold me the entire mobo/mass storage tray assembly minus CD-ROM and HD), as well as 2 128MB SO-DIMMs for AU$110 all up. When i got home i installed it all in my iMac, and did an OS 9 install, followed by a Jaguar install on a new HD i had gotten for free. Although the Jaguar install was unsuccessful, i put in the 40GB HD i had in the iMac before it died, and it successfully booted Jaguar. Since then i've been using my iMac as my main machine like i was before it died and its been compeltely trouble-free.

On slot loading iMacs, i'm sorry but they are total crap. I did work experience at an AASP for a while and every weeek we usually had one come in, usually for heat-related problems. Dead CRTs. Dead APV boards. Dead mobos, Dead Down convertor boards. They may be fine in other countries, but these machines simply can't handle an Australian summer well at all. I know i wouldn't even think about getting one unless i had A/C. I don't even see what the problem is with having a fan anyway...my tray load iMac has a fan, as everyone knows, and its whisper quiet...all you hear is a gentle hum, which is nothing compared to my Dell Pentium 4, with its 4 cooling fans, which sounds like a Boeing 747 taking off.

all that you did was take the long way of resetting the pram. All you had to do is hold the cuda reset button for about 30 seconds and it would have done the same thing that taking it apart for 48 hours did. and another way is to hold r-p-option-command as soon as you hear the start sound (but that is if it would go that far to where the screen would come on).

but your way worked just as good as if you was to hold the cuda reset button. i have seen pram battery's get low enough to mess up the booting even tho the time hasnt reset at all.

but back on toppic

the only problem i have seen from the new world iMac's is the flyback frying or the analog board fragging. i myself dont like the iMac's cause there is such a small upgrade path for them. i like expandability more so than a design of a case. my uncle has a bondi blue iMac tray loader 266mhz. the case is very easy to mess up when you are getting into it to work on it. the cd drive will not read burnt media and to replace that with a burner or something else so you can read burnt media is a PITA cause it uses a laptop optical drive