Now, hubby wants to use it. No OS comes up, just a blue screen & the beach ball of death.
It won’t startup with a disk either.
Is there any hope?
My guess is firmware, but he is convinced he can get it to work. Any help would be appreciated.
You might try resetting the PRAM/NVRAM. Start the machine holding down the Command-Option-P-R keys. Have all 4 keys down before the screen illuminates and keep holding them until it reboots and chimes a second time.
Did that.
I actually think I found the problem here. The battery is dead. It’s called the PMU (Power Management Unit) No battery, no worky.
I came here wondering if you might be referring to one of these: http://www.aoc.noaa.gov/aircraft_g4.htm
Yeah, I’ll go with the PRAM or in “PC Speak” the CMOS battery. Usually a coin cell type battery. It should be very evident as soon as you open up the G4.
They are typically the Lithium type and do have a limited shelf-life and as that G4 is old old old.
New Battery i.e. Power Management Unit, and it fired right up.
We also had an old G-5 that had a fried motherboard. The place we got the battery said they can fix it for less than $200.
That’s better than $1500 for a new one.
Well, FWIW, even a current low-end Mac mini (which hasn’t seen a major update in almost 2 years) is going to run rings around almost any G5 for $600. Just out of curiosity, what prompted your husband to want to resurrect a 15-year-old old desktop G4?