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Issues booting PowerMac G4 Quicksilver off of USB and CD

Hi all, I wanted to ask for some troubleshooting advice because I am losing my mind trying to figure out what is wrong with a PowerMac G4 Quicksilver I recently got.

First, this G4 came with the original hard drive installed. I decided to flash a OS X 10.4 installer to a USB drive and successfully re-partitioned the drive, installed 10.4 off USB, and then booted off of a OS 9.2 install CD to then install OS 9 on the second partition. All of this worked.

A few days later, I noticed the computer would constantly freeze upon starting up. I also noticed that when I tried to boot off USB (the same exact 10.4 image I used earlier), the computer would go to a white screen with a gray circle with a slash through it. Booting off of CD was also unresponsive, with the computer not seeming to recognize any bootable CD.

I decided that maybe the original hard drive was the issue and replaced it with an SSD. The same issues remained: the G4 wouldn't recognize the CD and booting from USB would just deliver the same error message.

I decided to take out the PRAM battery, reseat the RAM, and then disconnected the CD and hard drive one by one. Booting off USB still delivers the same issue. Does anyone have any possible suggestions for how to figure out what the exact issue is?
 

CircuitBored

Well-known member
I've owned about a dozen Quicksilvers so have done my fair share of troubleshooting and fiddling with them. These are my recommendations for you:

Reseat your graphics card and any PCI cards if you haven't already.

Check if your RAM sticks are all working properly by installing one at a time. You may also discover a bad RAM slot during this process.

You will likely need a new power supply sooner rather than later. Quicksilver PSUs are notoriously flaky and have started to drop like flies over the last few years. These machines are now twenty years old, after all. I've seen some similarly bizarre behaviour from Quicksilvers with dying power supplies.

If you're using an ADC-connected Studio/Cinema display then try using a different monitor. The ADC power rail is often the first part of the PSU to go bad.

A common fault on Quicksilver boards is cracked solder connections on the RAM and expansion slots. The Quicksilver is quite a, ahem, thermally compromised machine. They tend to run hot, which is fine if the machine runs 24/7 but daily power-ups and nightly shutdowns exacerbate things greatly. It's worth giving your board a once-over visual inspection but unfortunately it will take a long time to check the continuity of all those thru-hole parts with a multimeter. In my experience the RAM slot nearest the CPU is most likely to go bad.

Sad as it is to say: these boards are on the borderline as far as capacitors are concerned. I already have a QS board with leaky caps. It is entirely possible that there are bad caps at play here.

I hope some of this is helpful - good luck!
 
I've owned about a dozen Quicksilvers so have done my fair share of troubleshooting and fiddling with them. These are my recommendations for you:

Reseat your graphics card and any PCI cards if you haven't already.

Check if your RAM sticks are all working properly by installing one at a time. You may also discover a bad RAM slot during this process.

You will likely need a new power supply sooner rather than later. Quicksilver PSUs are notoriously flaky and have started to drop like flies over the last few years. These machines are now twenty years old, after all. I've seen some similarly bizarre behaviour from Quicksilvers with dying power supplies.

If you're using an ADC-connected Studio/Cinema display then try using a different monitor. The ADC power rail is often the first part of the PSU to go bad.

A common fault on Quicksilver boards is cracked solder connections on the RAM and expansion slots. The Quicksilver is quite a, ahem, thermally compromised machine. They tend to run hot, which is fine if the machine runs 24/7 but daily power-ups and nightly shutdowns exacerbate things greatly. It's worth giving your board a once-over visual inspection but unfortunately it will take a long time to check the continuity of all those thru-hole parts with a multimeter. In my experience the RAM slot nearest the CPU is most likely to go bad.

Sad as it is to say: these boards are on the borderline as far as capacitors are concerned. I already have a QS board with leaky caps. It is entirely possible that there are bad caps at play here.

I hope some of this is helpful - good luck!

Thank you for the detailed advice!

I decided to switch out the AGP card I had with a PCI video card that supported VGA output. I still got the same issues, so at least I can rule out anything graphics card-related.

My second and third RAM slots are definitely wonky - I tried fitting in at least 4 different RAM cards in them and none of them would work. Even the first slot seemed to only like the RAM card that came with the computer - the computer wouldn't boot with any of the other RAM, even though they are G4 compatible.

I will take a closer look at the logic board and definitely get a PSU replacement.
 
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