On Apr 13, 2005, at 8:20 AM, Greg Koelpien wrote:
I recently purchased three Power Macintosh G3 all-in-ones (Artemis) from a school sale down in Green Bay for $10 each.
(snip) The first thing I did was reformat the drives and install Mac OS 9.2.2 on all three of them. However, on one of the three, I wasn't getting any sound, not even a startup chime. I was thinking there was some kind of loose or broken connection leading to the speakers, and was contemplating having to open the case and track down the problem, as headphones plugged into the front panel jacks worked fine.
However, when I unplugged the headphones, the speakers made a sound for a split second, (an audio CD was playing at the time) and then silence again. I discovered that if I stuck the headphone plug about halfway into the jack and wiggled it around a bit, that the speakers would cut in and out. Finally, I was able to jigger them so that the speakers stayed on when the headphones were unplugged.
My question is, is this a common phenomena with the G3 All-in-Ones, or was this unit's headphone jacks just abused at some point in its six year history? Is the headphone jack repair an easy fix, or should I live with it?
(snip)
I've run into this headphone jack sound problem with a wide range of Mac all-in-ones, from 520s through G3 AIOs. It's especially likely to happen with those first used in schools where students were given headphones to use. What happens is that the headphone jacks are designed to mechanically enable the mute circuit for the internal speaker(s) when a headphone jack is inserted -- front jack(s) or rear jack, it doesn't matter.
After enough cycles (or enough probing with a foreign object), the metal strips inside the jack get bent or fatigue to the point where the mute circuit is enabled all the time. If you're lucky, as you've discovered, you can wiggle things around and un-mute the internal speaker(s). But don't expect this to be a permanent cure. The only permanent cure is to find a good used jack assembly or front panel assembly and replace the bad one.
This is a very common phenomenon with the G3 AIOs. It is possible to replace the headphone jacks, but it requires finding one or more with the same pin placement, very careful desoldering and resoldering, and a dollop of luck. (I've found boards where the jack was mechanically ripped from the board during use or during replacement attempts, fatally injuring the printed circuits beyond salvation or repair by an average solder technician.)
The circuit board for the AIO front panel is designed in such a way that if one jack is missing, internally broken or not soldered correctly, the mute circuit is automatically enabled. The headphone jack(s) on the front (and maybe the back one) may or may not work, depending on the amount of damage. The best fix is a good working replacement board. Period.
As for abuse, what would you expect from machines used by 20 or more juveniles in a lab supervised by only one adult? I've found pieces of pencils, ballpoint pen cartridges, paper clips, candy, spitwads, and unidentified foreign substances inside the headphone jacks on a number of Mac AIOs. I've not had much experience, yet, with iMacs used in schools, but after watching a number of students in the nearby grade school computer lab this school year have at the iMacs, eMacs and G3 AIOs, I suspect ex-school iMacs and eMacs will suffer the same fate. I've pulled bobby pins, paper clips, coins, bottle caps, candy, paper, rubber bands, etc. from inside ex-school floppy drives, so why should the speaker jack openings be immune from such treatment?
As for VRAM being maxed out in G3 AIOs, don't expect much from 6 MB VRAM if you're trying to run OS X.
-- Jim
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