Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community  

Go Back   Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community > Interests > Tilted Technology


 
 
LinkBack Thread Tools
Old 04-28-2004, 10:03 AM   #1 (permalink)
Insane
 
Location: Bay Area
iMac not booting up. Need to fix ASAP

A client brought in an iMac to my work - from <a href="http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58669">this </a> page I can tell it is a 1999 iMac DV.


The problem is it won't boot. When pressing the power it does the Apple Chime, but immediatly powers itself off. I thought this may be something with the Analog board that powers the CRT - I read that it was common for the Flyback Transformer on the Analog board to overheat and crap out. It said that sometimes you can plug in an external monitor via the VGA port on the back of the iMac and have it work normally. I tried this and I had the same problem as before. The fix for this is to swap the Analog board out for a new one. New ones are pretty pricey though, but we do have a similar model iMac that we can take parts from. The parts iMac is a Summer 2000 DV.

But then I started to find some information about the firmware needing to be updated before upgrading from MacOS 9 to MacOS X. If the firmware wasn't updated, then a similar problem with booting up would occur. I will have to double check whether or not anyone had tried to upgrade this to MacOS X.

So I'm stuck. In the first case, the consensus on Mac message boards is that the "newer" CRT iMacs (with slot loading CD drives) rarely suffer from Analog board failure because of improved circuitry (I guess it was a common problem in the early iMacs with tray loading CD-ROMs). Also, if it was the Analog board, then the external monitor port has been said to work. But perhaps the new circuitry of the slot loading iMacs could cause this to change?

Should I try to swap the Analog board? It looks kind of scary, working so close to the CRT and all those capacitors and such. I've never done it before, but I'm up for the task. How would I fix it if it had a firmware problem? Apple says you have to update the firmware by booting from the hard drive, not the cd drive or over a network. I can't even get the thing to boot. I was thinking of maybe swapping out the hard drive for another with MacOS 9 installed. Unfortunatly, the parts iMac had its hard drive removed. The other Macs we have are older, and I'm not sure if it would work.

In the case of Windows, if you swapped hard drives between two PCs with different hardware, they won't boot into Windows. I assume this is the case with Macs as well.

Anyway, any helpful comments and/or suggestions are appreciated. I need to get this taken care of ASAP.

Last edited by westothemax; 04-28-2004 at 10:05 AM..
westothemax is offline  
Old 04-28-2004, 01:25 PM   #2 (permalink)
An embarrassment to myself and those around me...
 
VitaminH's Avatar
 
Location: Pants
I'm not positive, but I seem to remember if you try to upgrade to OS X without upgrading the firmware, it will warn you of such and either upgrade it for you or tell you to do as much.
__________________
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
- Napoleon Bonaparte
VitaminH is offline  
Old 04-28-2004, 02:45 PM   #3 (permalink)
Insane
 
Location: Bay Area
Quote:
Originally posted by VitaminH
I'm not positive, but I seem to remember if you try to upgrade to OS X without upgrading the firmware, it will warn you of such and either upgrade it for you or tell you to do as much.
Good to know... thanks for the tip.
westothemax is offline  
Old 04-28-2004, 03:46 PM   #4 (permalink)
Misanthropic
 
Crack's Avatar
 
Location: Ohio! yay!
Buy a PC...

Sorry no help here, but it had to be said...
__________________
Crack, you and I are long overdue for a vicious bout of mansex.

~Halx
Crack is offline  
Old 04-28-2004, 09:17 PM   #5 (permalink)
Insane
 
Location: Bay Area
Quote:
Originally posted by crackprogram
Buy a PC...

Sorry no help here, but it had to be said...
I was thinking about suggesting it, but I didn't think the customer would've taken it too well. My opinion of Macs just went to hell after working on this iMac. Maybe the towers are a little better to work on, but these things are a real pain.
westothemax is offline  
Old 04-29-2004, 09:10 PM   #6 (permalink)
Buffering.........
 
merkerguitars's Avatar
 
Location: Wisconsin...
Quote:
Originally posted by westothemax
I was thinking about suggesting it, but I didn't think the customer would've taken it too well. My opinion of Macs just went to hell after working on this iMac. Maybe the towers are a little better to work on, but these things are a real pain.
The imacs are a pain in the ass to trouble shoot since it's it's built as all one unit...the tower are much easier to troubleshoot hardware problems
__________________
Donate now! Ask me How!

Please use the search function it is your friend.

Look at my mustang please feel free to comment!

http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=26985
merkerguitars is offline  
Old 04-30-2004, 01:12 AM   #7 (permalink)
Junkie
 
Location: San Diego
Do macs even have tech support? If so call them, they are probably the only ones who can help you.
__________________
If something seems too good to be true, then it probably is....
punx1325 is offline  
Old 04-30-2004, 06:14 AM   #8 (permalink)
Psycho
 
soopafreek's Avatar
 
Location: ask your mom
try scouring the apple support forums on apple's website. their online documentation is really good, and i'm sure someone else has had this problem too...
__________________
aaarrrrrgggghhhh!!!!
soopafreek is offline  
Old 04-30-2004, 08:07 AM   #9 (permalink)
An embarrassment to myself and those around me...
 
VitaminH's Avatar
 
Location: Pants
iMac's are a tremendous pain in the ass to crack open and do anything with the innards. The original iMacs you had to do serious disassembely in order to even add RAM. At least you can do that reletivly easily now, but reardless it's a pain if anything hardwarewise goes wrong.

Apple only offers live on the phone tech support for a year after purchase unless you purchase their extended support plan, but the forums and online documentation are very helpful and free.
__________________
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever."
- Napoleon Bonaparte
VitaminH is offline  
Old 05-03-2004, 06:04 PM   #10 (permalink)
Upright
 
If you live near an Apple Store, you should be able to take in your iMac, and the "Apple Geniuses" usually will fix it, or at least tell you what's wrong, for free.

Just out of curiosity, have you tried booting off the Install CD, if you could even get the CD in before it craps out?
Milliways is offline  
Old 05-04-2004, 03:13 PM   #11 (permalink)
Upright
 
Did you try booting into open firmware? I believe that you key combination in COMMAND+OPTION+O+F. It can be a real pain in the ass to get the command recognized. If I remember correctly, you have to press and hold the keys after the startup chime but before the screen comes to life.

If you get it to take, it should give you a white screen w. black text.

Type
init-nvram
reset all (might be reset-all)
reboot

Also recommend zapping the PRAM restart and press and hold command+option+P+R

you should hear the intial startup chime, keep holding the keys, you should hear another startup chime. Do this 2-3 time (just keep holding the keys and it will keep booting.

Check for loose or bad ram chips.
Macs are very picky when it comes to ram. I had to switch out ram to get OS X to install because it didn't like one of the DIMMs that I had installed.

Check the battery.

Is there anything other than a Keyboard and mouse connected. I've heard of Mac's not booting because of an overloaded USB bus.

I'm not sure about iMacs, but many G3's have what is called a CUDA switch. A small push button on the Logic Board near the PCI slots (on Desktop PowerMacs) It is basically a hard reset button.

Good Luck

Dan
djscott is offline  
 

Tags
asap, booting, fix, imac


Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On



All times are GMT -8. The time now is 08:37 AM.

Tilted Forum Project

Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.7
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, vBulletin Solutions, Inc.
Search Engine Optimization by vBSEO 3.6.0 PL2
© 2002-2012 Tilted Forum Project

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 99 100 101 102 103 104 105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112 113 114 115 116 117 118 119 120 121 122 123 124 125 126 127 128 129 130 131 132 133 134 135 136 137 138 139 140 141 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 149 150 151 152 153 154 155 156 157 158 159 160 161 162 163 164 165 166 167 168 169 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181 182 183 184 185 186 187 188 189 190 191 192 193 194 195 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204 205 206 207 208 209 210 211 212 213 214 215 216 217 218 219 220 221 222 223 224 225 226 227 228 229 230 231 232 233 234 235 236 237 238 239 240 241 242 243 244 245 246 247 248 249 250 251 252 253 254 255 256 257 258 259 260 261 262 263 264 265 266 267 268 269 270 271 272 273 274 275 276 277 278 279 280 281 282 283 284 285 286 287 288 289 290 291 292 293 294 295 296 297 298 299 300 301 302 303 304 305 306 307 308 309 310 311 312 313 314 315 316 317 318 319 320 321 322 323 324 325 326 327 328 329 330 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 341 342 343 344 345 346 347 348 349 350 351 352 353 354 355 356 357 358 359 360