Please help troubleshoot g5, pci expert needed

[charlesaustin]

Hi, first thanks for taking a look at this post.

Ok, on recent occasion my mac g5 needed to be turned on 2x to get it "started" (or so I thought)

Today I payed attention and noticed,

turned it on, chimes sounded (ran from machine room to control room), nothing on the monitor.... Well, when I went back, I noticed the motu's were "synced" like they would be if everything booted ok (no lights blinking etc). Everything looks like it is booted ok, except nothing on the screen. Hmmm,

So my question is, would the motu's behave like this if the mac was booting ok? In other words, if the g5 failed to boot, wouldn't the lights on the motu be blinking? Could my video card be the problem, and my computer is booting fine, I just can't see anything?

It would really help if someone has a pci interface and their apple in the same room, what screen on the apple do the lights stop blinking on the motu?

Thanks again.

[markg]

I suspect it is the PRAM battery and/or the video card.

I had a similar thing happen with my G5 last week. I don't have MOTU PCI hardware, but I could tell my G5 was fully booted (because I could hear the CPU chirp and could shut the system down by using shortcut keys), but the display was be blank. I replaced the PRAM battery, but that didn't fix the problem. Next, I replaced the video card and now the system works fine again. (Knock on wood.)

[charlesaustin]

That is good to hear, any other opinions?

I figured while I am in there I would change the Pram.

Thanks again.

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Do you have more that one OS installed on the machine? IOW, 10.5 as well as Snow Leopard?

When you say nothing from the monitor do you mean black (no signal) or white screen?

[charlesaustin]

Only one os installed. Screen is black. Thanks

[mikehalloran]

The good news is that used video cards are cheap and easy to find - eBay is a good source. You don't list what version of the G5 that you have- it's not one size fits all - nor do you list what kind of monitor you have.

OTOH, this also could be a CPU or motherboard. That is not a good thing with a G5. I have seen this caused by a hard drive but generally you get to the white screen first if it's an HD issue.

As these get older, one must decide how much you will invest in upkeep as components fail. The internal heat is what does it to these.

[James Steele]

Mike makes a good point. Sounds like it could be the video card and I bet you can find one for a G5 pretty cheap on eBay.

[Tim]

Can you view/share the screen from another computer on the network?