Today, every time I did anything - and even sometimes when I didn't, my G5's fans would rev like crazy and the CPU use would skyrocket. Odd, methinks. I shut down a whole bunch of apps - no help. It wasn't just one app either - it was whatever I was using. And I also heard it revving away all by itself a couple of times when I wasn't even in the room.
Ah...a restart should fix it! So, I shut down and restarted and left the room while it went through the process, to come back to a small jet landing in my office. And no video. This isn't good - restart again, using power button. It chimes....and then I wait. And wait. Nothing, nada, zip. Brief HD noises, but I do mean brief. Black Screen of Death.
Hmmm....
In the following two hours, I reset the PMU (several times), tried to reset the NVRAM, pulled all the RAM and then put each pair in and restarted (4X, since there are 8 sticks), disconnected all peripherals except for the monitor, took out all installed PCI cards...and still nothing. I didn't take out the video card, though I did have a good look at it, and it seemed well seated. Maybe I should have removed it and put it back, but given the lack of HD startup activity after the chime and the strange fan behavior, I decided to skip swapping out the video card with the new one I have waiting for my son's birthday. I even took out the PRAM battery and tested that with a voltmeter - it was fine. If the G5 was left for more than 5 minutes upon restarting, it slowly revved the fans to jet engine level. Every time. Tried booting every which way too - safe mode, single user etc., (except in FW target disk mode - never thought of that) - even opened the optical drive with a paperclip to see if I could boot off a CD. Nope.
Poking around online more or less confirmed my worst fears. It may well be a logic board failure. Because of the fan issue (and no, it's not running hot from what I can tell) I'm somewhat doubtful that it's just a video problem either. If it's a thermostat/sensing problem, then why no video?
It's not comforting to see the statistics for the dual 2.5GHz here either:
http://www.macintouch.com/graphics/pmg5_components.pngPretty much the same symptoms as reported here:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?m...77�There seem to be
a lot of unhappy G5 owners out there with logic board failures at around 3-4 years. I haven't even read that whole thread - it runs to something like 16 pages!
Should know by Monday afternoon. Running on my MBP in the mean time - and pulled the main drive from the G5 before dropping it off. (Has a cloned backup drive in there now).
I really, really wasn't planning on buying a new Mac Pro just yet...and given
the rumors/speculation and time span since the last Mac Pro update in January last year, I might be better to wait a couple of months and limp along with the external drive and the MBP. Not a prospect I particularly relish - the internal drive on the MBP is nowhere near big enough for all my files.
