My G5 Is Under Repair…, I'm a poor lonesome moderator Options

[lepetitmartien]

Well, I wasn't a lot around for 8 days as my G5 1.8 from 2003 decided to freeze on spot since last wednesday. It freezed at choice during boot (rotating thing), loading OS X (blue screen) or right during/after login.

The lithium battery was dead but not at first when I checked it, when I could change it it went slightly more "normal" as I could try to start from the Apple Hardware Test. Else I could only boot in Open Firmware and Single User Mode.

When I tried to startup on the install CD/DVD of 10.2.7, panther, tiger it froze too. However, after the lithium battery change I could install a 10.2.7 on the remaining drive (freeze in the middle but the system seems 100% on the drive).

The drives were OK, as the RAM (checked with memtest, while in SUM it can test 97% of you RAM including lower part not available another way), I counsel Applejack too which enables you to check drives, permissions, clean caches, check preferences while in SUM.

When I tried the AHT i went into something I found out is a commun bug instead of launching AHT i ended up in OF with this:

CODE

Invalid memory access at %SRR0: 000000000.6000d300 %SRR1: 100000000.40003030

Pretty impressive… but not meaning a lot.

As I knew my RAM was ok (even bought 1 GB more to check), the drives too, I tried in turn without the DVD burner, each SATA drives. I had no graphic card to try but overall it looks bad, only the hot pot, the temp sensors, the motherboard and the CPU are left, and no Applecare I have either (sorry Mr Apple, too expensive and never a mac has left me this way, NEVER). It's at the repairshop here in Paris since yesterday, and I ressucitated ye olde timer BW G3 last evening.

I'll buy tomorrow a FW external enclosure for the SATA drive on which I had saved my keychains/mail/etc as here I have no mail (it's my old mail database but I'm under tiger for a few months now and the databases are not compatible).

So in the end, it looks like it's something on the motherboard wich is blown in some way, so it'll $$$ in the end I know chips/components do die, but it's heartbrake, this was a fabulous computer. I'll know for sure in ten days.

Really, I need a macbook… (and no money for it s…t!)

[thegrapeguy]

My exact G5 is the PowerMac G5 2.7. The spec sheet says it came out in early (April) '05. Today I pick it up from the Apple store after having 2 processors and one logic board installed. When I signed the repair order the Apple guy said "take a look at how much that's costing us to fix it". The bill said $2600!
I wanted to say that's close to the price of all the wasted time I have in down studio time. I also said "I would have liked you guys to upgrade me to the Quad Core, and I would pay the difference". Anything to get out of this refurb 2.7 I bought from applestore.com.

Thanks for the help on SMU and RAM and I will ask them to test the lithium battery. I just feel in my gut that my problem (predominantly system wide freezeups, application freezeups, strange stutter glitches when I hit the stop button after recording audio - all when using Logic 7.2) comes from the way a PCI card communicates with the computer and Logic software.

I had far less problems when I used the crappy 1/8 inch input and output on the G5 tower. I've been through the Echo Mia card and now the ESI Julia card. I can't believe both these cards are bad.

Keep us posted on your computer.