iMac G3 Help! Please!

jamie1130

Hey. I have 4 iMac G3's, but none of them work. One is a tray loader that powers on for about ten seconds, then shuts off. Never shows anything though. With the screen disconnected it will run, with an orange power light, for any amount of time. The slot loaders all do the same thing. They make a noise from the speakers (sorry, don't know how to describe it) but don't do anything. Let me know if you need more information on any of them. I have not owned any since they were new. 1 from a yard sale, 1 from family, 1 from someone at church, and 1 from a thrift store(I paid $50 for it, cause it worked until I tried to upgrade the ram) Thanks, Jamie

garirry

My experience with super-old Macs is that it's probably something with the PSU. Short and quiet buzzing sounds, computer just randomly decides to kill itself, usually 70% of issues like that are related to the power supply. It could be the motherboard, but unless you damaged it yourself, it's rare that it self-destructs. You could try and find a power supply to test on each of the computers, but they're quite expensive and getting inside the computer is not a super-easy task, so it's not exactly something I would recommend doing unless you're invested into it. You could try resetting the PRAM/PMU and whatever on some of those computers, but it's probably as useful as me saying "have you tried turning it off and on again". Hope this helps.

TCPMeta

Chances are the CRT died. Those iMacs were a bad design. I had both models at one point and sure enough the slot load would died first then the trayload died shorty after. I parted out the slotload and converted the trayload to a "headless iMac" by converting a ATX power supply to power it and used an adapter for the video out.

I know a few people that converted iMacs to use LCDs but now they're too old to be bothered with.

calvinb

Check the capacitors if they're bulging or leaking. Replace them regardless.

TCPMeta

It's more then the caps ding. From a article I saw once it was a bunch of stuff on the CRT control board. Power resistors and transistors getting too hot and burning out.