Hello! I cannot think of anything else to try right no so I though maybe one of you guys might be able to help.
I've just recieved an old and dirty G3 Blue and White... It was really messed up, but I cleaned all the dust out by removing all that can be loosened, cleaning it and placeing the parts back to their original location. I then powered it on and got two symptoms: (1) I cannot hear a startup chime, (2) nor do I get video output. All it does is some head movements of the hard disk that seem to stop early. Not sure if Mac OS is starting without me seeing it. Pressing the power button shuts it down with no delay. The hard disk is the original (!) Quantum Firebird EX 12 GB from 1998/99. For it's more than ten years it still works amazingly well. I made an image of its contents using an external USB drive enclosure just to be on the safe side. (Doesn't support S.M.A.R.T. at all.) I tried this hard disk in my G4 Quicksilver Dual-800 MHz first: it is a Mac OS 9.2.2 operating system with some software installed. No Mac OS X of any kind. (I was hoping for 10.0 or 10.1...) So: the hard drive is good, it works. PROVED by using my G4 QS. Question remains what may be wrong with the G3 B&W. Power supply seems to be good, otherwise it wouldn't power up, right? I've got four DIMMs of 128 MB RAM that I swapped around. No change. By the way, I got this G3 with emptied banks... I use the USB keyboard for my G4 QS. The one-button Apple mouse is connected to the keyboard. I noticed that the G3 B&W also has an ADB connector, but I don't have such a keyboard, so I cannot try. No luck with the Cmd-Opt-O-F boot keys. Or I just cannot see the picture... My guess is that the video gard is faulty. It is the original ATI Rage 128. Sorry, no specs other than that. Reached a point: about the specs: G3 350 MHz (at least something like this is written on the processor). 1 to 4 128 MB SDRAM from another G4 GE I also got. Works there. The original 12 GB Quantum Fireball EX hard drive, jumpered as master. ATI Rage 128 I left the optical drive out for now. So the 2nd IDE cable is not connected. As far as I could find out it is system board revision 1 with the faulty IDE controller chip PCI646U2 and the smaller processor heat sink. The monitor is a LCD/TFT, but it's connected using the analog VGA cable alright. No signs of a wrong signal here (like "FREQUENCY TOO HIGH" or anything alike). I DO NOT posess a replacement video card for the G3 B&W. All the cards I own are AGP versions (G4 AGP onward). I wonder -- (1) Is there any way to see if the computer works at all, when there's no display available? (2) Is there an Apple Hardware Test (AHT) available for the G3? Any suggestion? Or do I have to throu it in the barrel? Thanks, Andreas aka Mac User #330250
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