[OT] Dead Video and no keyboard

[Mike Bonner]

Just thought of one more thing, could be your power supply suddenly
decided to get lazy and provide too little power.  Enough to get you
to the bong, but not enough to spin up the drives and initialize the
rest of the hardware.

I've seen machines where you turn them on, and the initial required
surge was too much for a marginal power supply to handle, but if you
waited long enough for the drives to reach speed then hit reset rather
than power, boom it would boot.  This is a "Bad Idea" (c) 2010 as
continuing to run with marginal power will cause hardware problems in
the long (or maybe short) run, but just thought I'd toss it out there.

On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 7:49 AM, Mike Bonner <bonnmike at gmail.com> wrote:
> Wow, just read my own message.  Glad I was writing in my native
> tongue, no clue how much more unreadable it would have been if I'd
> tried to alternate-language things.
>
> On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 7:46 AM, Mike Bonner <bonnmike at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Of course do all of this while being careful of static.
>>
>> Out of curiosity, with the previous dead card in place, did you get
>> bong, no video, but a lit up keyboard? assuming you have keyboard
>> lights that flash when its found.  Does the keyboard light up with the
>> new card at all during the detection phase?  Are you sure its not
>> actually booting headless? If you have another machine, and the
>> ill-mannered one is setup for remote admin, can you confirm that its
>> not actually up?
>>
>> As I mentioned before I don't know much about older macs specificall, but..
>>
>> Can the mac g4 run with a single memory chip installed? If so, you
>> might try playing a game of musical memory.  Try 1 chip at a time and
>> see if you get video with a single. (don't know if it requires dual
>> memory banks to be filled or not)
>>
>> Also, might want to remove any other pci cards that are in the machine
>> leaving only video, as well as do the same test again with the old
>> video card.
>>
>> Finally, if your keyboard has lights that cycle during detection, can
>> you pull all video cards out of the machine and see if things cycle up
>> sans video card?
>>
>> Are you sure the card you replaced with is compatible with the version
>> of g4 you have?
>>
>> A silly thing to check, if your motherboard has additional socketed
>> types of chips, you might nudge them also just to make sure they're
>> still seated well enough, and strangely enough if they've managed to
>> get oxidization on any contacts a nudge can help break things loose
>> and get things reconnected. (LIke the old atari st, after years of
>> service then tended to turn into paperweights. The solution was to
>> take off the plastic housing and twist the inside clamshell case
>> gently between your hands, causing the connection between the 2 halves
>> to clear and clean themselves due to friction)
>>
>> I was just reading a little, is your monitor hooked powered through an
>> ADC connector? If so, might check the little cable for that is
>> connected. (again, running a little blind when it comes to the older
>> macs)
>>
>> A computer engineer at this point would indeed be handy.
>>
>> Wish I could sell you my mac pro, but due to various things beyond my
>> control alas its not really feasible.
>>
>> On Sat, Aug 21, 2010 at 5:37 AM, Richmond <richmondmathewson at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> On 08/21/2010 11:21 AM, Peter Alcibiades wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Richmond Mathewson-2 wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Is this the point where I try to find a computer engineer?????
>>>>
>>>>   No, this is the point at which you make a Hackintosh!
>>>>
>>>> Peter
>>>>
>>>
>>> Actually I am at the stage where my sense of humour has worn very very thin
>>> indeed; I have to get tge bl**dy machine functioning again; and having had a
>>> day
>>> of "fun" at the Bulgarian customs being charged an extra $40 dollars to get
>>> my
>>> 'import' from the USA just to get my expensive video card I am very close to
>>> tears.
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>>
>