Power Mac G5

[Mike McCall]

Yesterday I was given a Power Mac G5 & monitor. I got the mouse, but he's looking for the keyboard. Anyway, I thought it might be a fun toy to play with so I hooked everything up this morning. No display on the monitor, though the lights underneath are amber/yellow. Tower seems to start fine initially, but all I end up with are 3-blinks of the power indicator and the fans slowly spinning up to full speed. I did find an article that suggests a cause and a potential solution.

http://forums.macrumors.com/threads...d-flashes-with-good-ram-a-case-study.1676857/
http://forums.macrumors.com/threads...d-flashes-with-good-ram-a-case-study.1676857/
I don't know if I want to get that far into this.

 

[sapphirescales]

These days a G5 is about as useful as the original blueberry iMac. Feel free to screw around with it, but something of that age generally has a lot of problems and is basically worthless as a modern computer. They had known logic board and power supply problems. If I were you I'd try the RAM and if you can't get it to start then I'd chuck it.

 

[Markverhyden]

The link below is for the late '05 model. Should give you some direction. Yeah, the PPC will limit you since support for that platform dried up quite a while ago. Let me know if you need an OS image.

http://central-it-service.com/owncloud/index.php/s/Lwi2APSJmrRnSaG

 

[Mike McCall]

The link below is for the late '05 model. Should give you some direction. Yeah, the PPC will limit you since support for that platform dried up quite a while ago. Let me know if you need an OS image.

http://central-it-service.com/owncloud/index.php/s/Lwi2APSJmrRnSaG

Thanks, Mark! Like I said, I don't want to get too deep into this, but if I can resurrect it fairly easily it might be fun to play with.

 

[Mike McCall]

IT LIVES!

So, I removed & reseated the RAM & HDD and it fired up. Never had a PowerPC so it should be fun.
1.8GHz
2.5GB RAM
OS X 10.5.8

Now, the guy who gave it to me has a ton of personal stuff I'm trying to clean up. Some of it requires his Administrator password which (of course) he doesn't remember. It boots directly in so I don't need it to get to the desktop, but I'm unable to change the password without the original, nor can I create a new account. I don't recall there being a suitable workaround that doesn't require a system reload. Options?

 

[Mike McCall]

And it's dead again. Really like the case though.

 

[Markverhyden]

Bummer. Yeah, the cases are really nice. I've seen several who have gutted them and rebuilt them with what they wanted for the internals.

Edit: Forgot to mention. Did you swap the lithium battery? In the Apple ecosystem when they get low they can actually keep a machine from booting properly.

 

[johnrobert]

Fun to play around with if you have the time
if you had this in the 80's it would be a super computer

 

[Markverhyden]

The PPC chipset is still very alive and well in the mid range server world. I've been keeping my eye on eBay as I'd love to get my hands on system at a good price.

 

[Mike McCall]

Played a bit with the memory (reseating), but no go. Will probably continue to play with it from time to time.

 

[Markverhyden]

Played a bit with the memory (reseating), but no go. Will probably continue to play with it from time to time.

Did you check/swap the lithium battery?

 

[Mike McCall]

Did you check/swap the lithium battery?

Hmm, not yet. I'll give that a try.