Hi Everyone,
I recently received a couple pallets full of Apple Power Mac G3 computers. Being a PC guy, I know little about Mac's. These computers came without hard drives to protect the previous owners. However, for some reason, these computers do nothing when powered up, even with an IDE HD installed. We suspected the original HD's may have been SCSI; but even with a SCSI HD installed they still do nothing except for the high pitched squeak the power supply makes when the main power switch is flipped. Does anyone here know if there is a way to undo these disabled Mac's. I know there not worth much but I figured I would give it a try.

Thanks!
Adam

__________________
Current Stable:
01 ML55 AMG
92 500E (a few mods)
87 300E (lots of mods)
00 Chevy 3500HD Diesel Box Truck
68 18' Donzi Marine
06 GT i-Drive7 1.0 Mountain Bike (with GPS!)

PREVIOUSLY OWNED:83 300SD, 87 420SEL, 88 420SEL, 90 420SEL, 86 560SEL, 86 190E 2.3-16V AMG, 94 E320

It sounds like the ROMs are fried, too. When powered-up, even if the hard drive is missing, the opening screen should display as that screen is in ROM, if I remember correctly. Immediately after the opening screen a self-check begins and it does things like look for RAM, look for a HD, etc. If it finds the HD it should load the remainder of the boot OS from the drive into RAM.

If it fails at any stage after the opening screen it shows a "Sad Mac" face with an error code then the whole shebang locks-up. Write down the error code and go online and search for what it means.

But if you're not even getting to the opening screen, you got some serious doo-doo.

B

Yeah, the screen is just as blank as if there was no power going to them. Any other suggestions?

__________________
Current Stable:
01 ML55 AMG
92 500E (a few mods)
87 300E (lots of mods)
00 Chevy 3500HD Diesel Box Truck
68 18' Donzi Marine
06 GT i-Drive7 1.0 Mountain Bike (with GPS!)

PREVIOUSLY OWNED:83 300SD, 87 420SEL, 88 420SEL, 90 420SEL, 86 560SEL, 86 190E 2.3-16V AMG, 94 E320

Try different video cards. Try swapping parts from different computers to see if you can get one to work. I would try first to see if you can test any of the stuff in another computer that you know works. Like maybe some of the mac stuff you can swap into a PC to see if thats the culprit.

If you cannot successfully get one to boot, tell the seller hes full of it.

__________________
-Justin

91 560 SEC AMG - other dogs dd
01 Honda S2000 - dogs dd
07 MB ML320 CDI - dd
16 Lexus IS250 - wifes dd

it's automatic.

Well, I cannot complain about the price since it was FREE.

The video cards are built into the mobo's so that's not an option. There is no hardware here I could swap to PC to help me in any way.

__________________
Current Stable:
01 ML55 AMG
92 500E (a few mods)
87 300E (lots of mods)
00 Chevy 3500HD Diesel Box Truck
68 18' Donzi Marine
06 GT i-Drive7 1.0 Mountain Bike (with GPS!)

PREVIOUSLY OWNED:83 300SD, 87 420SEL, 88 420SEL, 90 420SEL, 86 560SEL, 86 190E 2.3-16V AMG, 94 E320

Hmm...

Which typs of G3's are you talking about. I thought that they look like this, so everything is modular...

__________________
-Justin

91 560 SEC AMG - other dogs dd
01 Honda S2000 - dogs dd
07 MB ML320 CDI - dd
16 Lexus IS250 - wifes dd

it's automatic.