Zombie G5 - Macintosh Garden

This page is a wiki. Please login or create an account to begin editing.

5 posts / 0 new

Last post

2012, March 17 - 11:32am

mathieudel

Offline

Joined: 2009 Dec 15

Zombie G5

Hello all,

I've got a (wonderful ?) G5 lying in its box... yes, just serving no purposes. The reason : it's is not dead nor alive, it's a zombie !

Let me explain : I can start it, use it, install anything that fits MacOS 10.3 to MacOS 10.5 or Classic, that's fast and a real pleasure to get such a powerful Macintosh.
But, if I use it to much (can be two days or one month), the finder eventually stops responding (the mouse still moves, but any action that I take hangs).
Once in this situation, the computer cannot start again, as the startup disk seems to be corrupted up to the point where I have to format / install everything again.

Does anybody here have a clue about what's happening ?

Comments

2012, March 17 - 12:06pm

Mulder

Offline

Joined: 2012 Jan 29

If the startup disk were really corrupted, then running Disk Utility would report that and attempt to correct it, but I doubt that's the problem. Since this isn't the place for support, why don't you try the Apple Discussions forums: http://discussions.apple.com

Lots of smart people there; or you could take it to your nearest Apple Store to see if they can figure out the problem, and fix it.

2012, March 17 - 12:27pm

(Reply to #2) #3

mathieudel

Offline

Joined: 2009 Dec 15

Well, I already tried the Apple Store solution : they don't want to look at it because it's too old of a computer (they'll prefer me to buy a brand new one). Concerning the discussion forums, I got answers like 'Go to an Apple Store', 'It's dead', 'Put the MB in a oven' (!), 'G5s are problem wise'. Not that useful.

As for running disk utility, it reports nothing wrong until the problem occurs, and once it occurred, I can do nothing more than format the disk because by then it became unreadable.

"this isn't the place for support" : I may be mistaken, but I think I made my post in the "Emulation & support" forum. It is described as "Issues regarding emulation, general technical assistance & tips.".

I really appreciate the community here at MG, a place where one can found lots of people loving their old computers, many of them having a deep knowledge of Apple's hardware history. That's why I thought it would be the right place for assistance concerning this particular problem.

And to cap it all, I'm quite in the fix-it yourself spirit. I prefer to buy some pieces for a few bucks (well, €s in fact ) and take a soldering iron, than grab my hardware to a store that will eventually fix it for a hundred €s. (ex: just bought a 2€ battery pack for my old nano, fixing it in no more than 1h, where it would have cost me 75€ to let Apple fix it)

2012, March 17 - 1:13pm

(Reply to #3) #4

Mulder

Offline

Joined: 2012 Jan 29

Just because the Apple Store doesn't want to look at it doesn't mean they can refuse to help you. It's their product and it's perfectly viable as long as they have any replacement parts that might be needed or the issue can be solved via software. Don't let them get away with that nonsense. My Mac is older than your G5 and I can take it to my nearest Apple Store if I need help.

The comments you got from those people on the forums saying "it's dead", or to "put it in an oven" are obviously from people who have no real knowledge of Macs, so it's safe to ignore them. There are lots of smart people on the forums who probably can help you, but based on what you describe, it sounds like your hard drive is failing. You should be able to check that by starting up from your OS X install disc, choosing your language, then choosing Disk Utility from the Utilities menu in the menu bar and running 'Verify Disk'. When that's done, look at the bottom of that window for the S.M.A.R.T. status of your hard drive. If it says (in green) 'Volume passed verification' then your drive is okay. It there's a message in red that says your drive failed verification, it's failing and you need to replace it with a new one ASAP.

You should also try running the Apple Hardware Test disc that came with your Mac, since there could be other hardware failures causing this issue.

2012, March 17 - 1:20pm

(Reply to #4) #5

mathieudel

Offline

Joined: 2009 Dec 15

If it was that simple, I would not ask !
S.M.A.R.T status is perfect, I also replaced the hard drive by one that I use daily on my PC, and got the exact same result.
I just grabbed a diagnostic tool used by Apple Center and will try to use it on the computer.