Power Mac G4 doesn't display video after attempted RAM upgrade

[sega dude]

I have a lot of PC133 RAM laying around from various PCs I've parted out. I thought I would use it to bring my Power Mac G4 Sawtooth up to 1GB from 640MB. So, I put the RAM in, hooked it back up and turned it on...but it made a horrible staticy sound instead of the startup chime and it never displayed anything on the monitor. So I reseated all the RAM sticks and the start up chime was normal, but it still didn't display anything on the monitor. So I put the original RAM sticks back in, and it again chimes like normal, but it still isn't displaying anything on the monitor. I hope I didn't kill it Please help!

 

[Macdrone]

Did you do the button reset as indicated for hardware upgrades?  the little push button on the motherboard?  The ram you put in probably was bad or not compatible.  Not all PC ram is created equal.  The video card not showing video should just be a coincidence.  If that doesn't work, re seat the video card, make sure the cable is inserted fully and zap the pram and see it that does the trick.

 

[sega dude]

Did you do the button reset as indicated for hardware upgrades?  the little push button on the motherboard?

I wasn't aware there was such a button. Are you talking about the button circled in the Power Mac G4 (AGP edition) picture on this Apple support page? I'll try reseating the video card and zapping the PRAM as you suggested and see if that helps.

 

[Macdrone]

yuppers, pmu reset is advised after all hardware upgrades.  

 

[Byrd]

Blast out dust and reseat cards, remove anything else (eg. PCI cards) and test again

 

[sega dude]

I removed all but one of the original RAM sticks (the 256MB PC133 stick in the 1st slot) and it finally displayed video and booted up. It would seem that one of the original sticks or one of the slots are bad. However, prior to removing them the first time, all the slots were occupied and all of the sticks in each slot were recognized. I wasn't able to reseat the video card or remove the PCI cards because the screws won't budge, a problem I have all the time. Attempting to reset the PRAM didn't seem to work, even though I was using an Apple USB keyboard.

 

[Schmoburger]

It is highly likely you had multiple bad modules... tbh they might even work fine on a PC of a similar era , however Mac's tend to be a little sensitive to shit quality RAM. That is likely the intitial root of your issues.

New World towers tend to be a little temperamental when it comes to major changes in hardware configuration such as graphics cards, RAM, or CPU's, also and you should make a habit of resetting the cuda via the logic board button after every upgrade... remove all power, pull battery and hold for 15 seconds then release. The cuda reset is often an answer to many Sawtooth and later problems, right up to the G5, and is almost mandatory on the B+W G3 and the original Yikes G4 (which uses basically a slightly  simplified Yosemite architecture) I learned this very early on in my days of hotrodding B+W G3's... when I first attempted an overclock I thought Id fried the board, but it turned out a methodical reset of cuda, then PRAM and NVRAm (done via open firmware) was what was needed. I also found in some cases after a configuration change or sometimes arbitrarily, with the Yosemite board (and also once with my Sawtooth) I needed to boot up with the programmer button held in until a long tone was heard, after which the machine would come good.

Basically, if you have a failure to boot

1) Reset the cuda

2) start up mholding in the programmer switch until a tone is heard and the machine reboots

3) reset it from the restart button on the front and do the normal PRAM reset... Opt+Cmd+P+R. Do it twice.

4) after you get a display, restart again and hold Opt+Cmd+O+F to boot to white Open Firmware screen... once here, type the following commands at the prompt and hit "Return" after each command...

reset-nvram

set-defaults

reset-all

After the "reset-all" command the machine will restart.