G3 AIO no startup chime, no video

[reallyrandy]

Hi guys,

I got this G3 AIO from one of the board members here and it worked beautifully for a bit. Today I was looking for Iomega Tools on Macintosh Garden using IE for the Mac and I walked away for a minute. When I came back the AIO was frozen, the image was on the screen but no mouse movement or keyboard response. I turned it off from the switch on the back and then turned the switch back on and hit the start key on the ADB keyboard. I heard the computer turn on and the hard drive spin up but no chime and no video. I tried it again same thing. I tried booting with option-command-p-r to no avail. I opened the back drawer and hit the reset button right next to the card slot, same thing. I'm at a loss now.

It's running 9.2 and does the same thing if I try to boot off a CD. It seems odd to me that a system freeze could cause a problem like this.

Any suggestions?

 

[reallyrandy]

Here's what it says in the Service Manual:

Symptom:

Fan is running, LED is on, drive is accessed at startup, but no startup chime and screen is

black

1. Check jumper block J28. Make sure setting is correct for type of power supply

installed (see “Logic Board” in Take-Apart chapter for more information).

2. Reseat ROM DIMM.

I'll try this in the morning. Funny thing, it hasn't been messed with, oh well.

 

[uniserver]

first thing i would do is take it in the garage or outside, fireup the compressor, and blast then thing out, they are dust magnets, get the monitor to, next i would pop the ram out, then pop it back in, then try it.

 

[mcdermd]

Yeah, mine was really dusty too. I think there's still dust in the PSU as I'm hearing a snap every now and again when it starts up.

 

[Bunsen]

Check the battery too.

 

[Macdrone]

Beige aio g3 acts like the desktops also, check the VRM capacitors. I have a spare if yours is bad. Good luck.

 

[reallyrandy]

So, I replaced the battery, cleaned the board and the chassis of dust, re-seated all the cards and RAM and still no chime and no video. I'm at a a loss.

 

[reallyrandy]

I do get a green LED light on the front of the machine. I don't know if I want to dump any more money into this thing though.

 

[markyb86]

Try without the pram battery

 

[mcdermd]

The logic board should be the same as a Desktop machine if you need to swap it.

 

[uniserver]

the power connector is alot like an atx, isn't there a wire you can short to make the psu kick on... so you can check voltages? also there is a replaceable VRM board on those. as macdrone said if i remember correctly this VRM board, has like 5 or 6 densely populated conventional radial capacitors.

Oh, also, you might need to take the mainboard out, macdrone will tell you his q700 had a blanket of dust under his mainboard causing it to not power-up.

i just now realized my q700 was acting a little funny the other day, this is something even i should check.

Don't start getting depressed and throwing around the "LOSS" term. I mean if you talk to the right person they well you your whole collection of crappy old computers was a total loss working or not. Just stay positive and do some real troubleshooting, you will get through this, and will come out that much smarter because of it.

I cannot even begin to count the amount of machines mcdermd got in and were just totally DOA,

A, re-cap, and some patience, will get you through most of the time, and in only a rare case did he acutely need a motherboard swap because of a flakey sound IC that went bad due to previous user neglect, running a machine knowing your caps are bad, can make other things go things including IC's go bad, like the guys out there with SE/30 DEAD boards, /w bad borns filters, No Sound, Dead scsi, ETC. Many people out there with dead LC PSU's, man those things are dyeing left and right. However as james1095 mentioned, its only the caps that go bad, they are like tires, or heck, a timing belt, a wear item. viewtopic.php?f=9&t=19978

This issue is no different then lots of other vintage macs i'v had, and its no different then issues you will have in the near future with any mac in your collection, if you are not equipped to re-cap.

Ask LCGuy, He leaves his working macs for a year at a time, puts them up, comes back a year later and 2 or 3 won't work any more and will now require some troubleshooting.

I think that is why they call this forum a liberation army, were always fighting a war of defective mac's

 

[Macdrone]

Also after all that cleaning try turning on then off and back on again. All my G3 beige machines seem to like that for some reason. If not recheck the VRM. Good luck.

 

[Macdrone]

Also after all that cleaning try turning on then off and back on again. All my G3 beige machines seem to like that for some reason. If not recheck the VRM. Good luck.

 

[reallyrandy]

Thanks, I pulled the VRM out and everything (at least visually) looks good. This machine got slammed around pretty good by UPS or FedX I don't remember which. So I'm thinking I'm gonna disassemble the rest of the machine and re-assemble. I placed a new battery in there hoping that would fix it but it didn't.

 

[Macdrone]

I have an extra AIO if you need parts, I know its been a while but you never know when you want to work on a project. The motherboard processor socket has a clip that holds the heat sink on is broke but the machine works, just looking for someone who needs anything out of it.

 

[techknight]

judging by how the system "froze" you probably lost something processor related. Such as RAM, ROM, the processor itself, or more likely, one of its core voltage regulators. Simple as reseats, complex as maybe a transistor or two.

Because you didnt loose video during the freeze tells me the system bus, video chips, etc were ok. You purely lost the processor side.