PowerPC :: Mac G5 - Monitor Breaking Up With Different Patterns
Nov 15, 2010
I'm trying to troubleshoot my Mac G5. When I start up the computer the monitor is breaking up with patterns of dots, colour problems, and broken images/text so the screen is unreadable. Frequently, the computer crashes or freezes. After I restart it about 4 times the monitor works fine. I've now had it on for a couple of days and it's been fine. Would this indicate a video card problem or some other issue and is there any tests that would help me determine the problem.
Any good links or tips on how to best break this new battery in properly upon installing? Will be replacing the original battery that came with, which has about 65% health @ 389 cycles. Lasts about 35 minutes before completely shutting off.
The problem started with my MBP freezing about once per day (sometimes spinning wheel, sometimes complete unresponsiveness). After doing a hard reset, I would usually be given the grey screen with stop sign, and the machine wouldn't boot. Resetting the PRAM would fix this, and it would boot OK. This was going on for a few weeks (I did disk checks which came back fine).
Then a couple of days ago the machine froze (unresponsive), I did a hard reset but just got the chime and grey screen - no Apple logo, no spinning wheel, no stop sign. Nothing. I did PRAM and SMC resets, but still nothing. I tried booting safe, safe verbose, hardware test, single user - nothing would work; just chime and blank grey screen. So I thought my OS installation had died.But when I tried to boot to the Lion DVD, still nothing - grey screen, the DVD would spin up, then spin down to a stop. I thought it might me faulty RAM, but not having any others to try I just swapped the two pieces over. Nothing.
Then I plugged my external 500GB HDD in to the USB (which was the machine's original internal HDD) and suddenly the Lion DVD would boot. So, the internal 1TB was dead. I put the 500GB back inside, booted Lion DVD successfully, formatted the HDD and started the Lion install. This failed with an error message 'the support files can't be copied - restart to try again'. So I restarted and in disk utility it said the HDD S.M.A.R.T was failing and it had a serious fault which could not be fixed and needs to be replaced. The 500GB disk was working fine and had had very little use since being replaced by the 1TB in January this year (the 1TB was brand new in January). So it seems odd that the both decided to fail one day after each other.
I have an Imac at work, and it is agonizingly slow. Plus Photoshop CS2 is breaking up images so they are unworkable and is corrupting them. The hard drive says there is 202 GB available so -- is this a scratch disk problem and if so, why isn't 200 G enough? Does anyone have any help as to what I can do to speed this up? I have ordered (or are ordering at some point) another stick of RAM - but I am quite sure the problem is not going to be completely solved with that.
A friend of mine did a publication using pages in which the final result was a pdf document which had 2 different page layouts. The first page was w26cm by h29.7cm and the rest of the pages were w52cm by h29.7cm.
I'm unable to contact him but he told me that he did this in pages. Im trying to do the same page format and cannot get 2 different sizes.
Is there a way in pages that you can do this and export it as a pdf? What I currently have is 2 documents with different size pages, so is there another way, such as another program that merges the two documents together?
just lately when i open a photo in iphoto it breaks up into pieces on the screen in iphoto so i click outside the photo again to restore to thumbnail size and click again to reopen and it's fine for editing etc. parts of the pic are there and parts are black the first attempt at opening. can't quite figure it out. have trashed iphoto prefs. used disk warrior etc. anyone have this occur to them and how they fixed it?
Is there any way to decouple iCal from the computer's clock? I find the fact that if I reset the computer's clock it 'adjusts' everything in the calendar infuriating. When I try to look back at appointments from when I lived overseas a few years ago they are completely out of whack because iCal has 'fixed' all of the times by changing them to what they would have been in ET - in some cases moving them to a different day or making it look like I was attending meetings in the middle of the night.
This problem also exists going forward. I.e. if I fill in appointments before a trip, but then change the clock while I'm on the road so that, while working, I have the correct local time on my screen, iCal 'adjusts' everything in the calendar. This is not helpful.
Yes, I know I can designate a time zone for each appointment as I create it. But, again, that just makes the appointments all look strange on my calendar before I travel. In any case, it is an extra step in creating appointments which I should not have to take.
In short: I want my appointments to show in the calendar with the time I designated and for that not to change regardless of what I do to the computer's clock.
I want upgrade our xserve from 2 x 250GB mirrored discs running Mac OS X 10.3.9 on xserve to running 1 x 250GB system disc (keeping other as spare) and 2 x 500GB mirrored data discs. (Then upgrade to Tiger).
Can I break the software mirror with: diskutil destroyRAID /dev/disk{x} or does this destroy the data too? Would I be left with two working, bootable discs or just two RAID slices? If the latter, how can I convert them into 'normal' bootable discs?Would it be better to upgrade to Tiger first? Or not make much difference?
How do I stop iTunes from breaking out all the songs in one album into multiple albums when the artist has many collaborators on the different songs, for example Timbaland? I want to just listen to the full album with all the songs, instead of having to play every song separately.
i've never had to buy this seperately, but can i buy ANY kind of monitor?i was thinking about this one.plus, i was gonna install leopard on it. good idea or not?i've been hearing mixed reviews on leopard on older macs. some people tell me i should just get tiger. its running panther right now.
I am new to this forum, an old guy who is not very tech savy. I have two Powerbook G4s that are about 4-5 years old, a 17" and a 15". My 17" 's screen is half gone, but the 15" is fine. Is there a way to use the screen on the 15" as an external monitor so I can work from my 17" ? I was able to hook my 17" up to a dedicated external monitor in another city and it worked great, but the cables I used to do that with were obvious.
Just wondering if i can use my Imac G5 lcd as monitor for a pc? I want to learn 3Dmax and need to buy a pc,if i could utalise my Imac G5's display as display for a pc aswell would be a big help not only is it an excellent Lcd, but i could save $$.
I had a quick question regarding a mod I'm considering with a G4 iMac 17". Basically, I want to dismantle the original machine and make a new box to connect to the G4's arm and display. However, I remember reading somewhere that the G4's display used some type of proprietary connector and that this would be impossible. Can anyone who has more knowledge on this than me let me know if I can do this? Soldering is not a problem if needed.
Forgive me if this has been discussed on here previously, I didn't see anything in a cursory search, so here I am. I've come into ownership of a discarded iMac G3 (aqua, tray-load) that upon plugging in, starts, and then sits on the gray Apple logo screen for eternity, so I know that the CRT works. What I want to do is this: I currently have an LG flatscreen monitor plugged into a converter box that turns coax cable into a VGA signal, so I'm using the monitor as a TV, with external speakers, in my office. I'd love to be able to use this iMac in the same way, essentially just use the screen and leave all the guts in there spinning all day long. Now, I've seen a bunch of posts around the web about using the iMac G3s as external monitors for MacBooks and whatnot, but that all seems to rely on actually routing information through the computer itself, rather than just the screen. Has anyone done this? If I get one of the converters out there that'll turn the 15-pin monitor connection into a VGA hook-up, will the CRT still have power? Is there another option? Do I have to resort to iMac-quarium (which would still be a cool addition to the office)?
I have an old iMac G4 and I was wondering if I could just use the screen somehow since I don't need to use it as a computer? Could I use it like a TV to play xbox or something?
I would like to use the machine to do powerpoints at our church. I want to use the internal monitor and an external monitor (projector) to do the powerpoints. I want it to work like the my iBook with the screen spanning hack installed.
if not then i will probably end up using a g3 desktop instead.
I have a 15" Powerbook, and have just had an old mirror-door 867Mhz desktop Mac delivered. Is it possible to use the Powerbook's screen as its monitor? How could I connect the two?
My iBook G3 has a black screen (hard drive ok). How can I hook up my eMac to us as the monitor for the iBook? I don't want to run the iBook in target mode, but use it as the primary computer.
've been a PC person since forever but more and more I've come in need of a mac, mainly for editing and the use of Final Cut Pro and After Effects. My PC has served me well but was slowing and so when I saw a cheap G5 for sale I snapped it up. Now I'm aware it's the older PowerPC style and it doesn't support the latest and greatest apps but FCP 6 will do me fine. However I have some hardware setup questions I can't seem to find a simple answer to anywhere so I turn to you for.
My G5 came with a rather nice 23' HD Cinema display that I'm currently using, however in my old PC setup I used 3 monitors, 2 identical ones and a TV via DVI-HDMI so I could edit over the two windows and monitor my work on the telly.
I have a first gen iMac 24 Intel with a dead logic board. However everything works in it. The screen, power supply, isite, speakers. appear to work fine. I got a MacBook Pro to replace it and I wanted to know if there is a way to turn the old iMac into something that is more like the Apple 24� display, even if I need to do electronics work in it.
I am in IT and have access to a lot of dead stuff I can scavenge for parts. I am also an electronic technician, so I should be able to do this. I just don�t know what I need to do.
Hunting down info on this topic has come with that there are controller issues. If I can pull a controller out of another dead LCD display that I happen to have, I can see it working. I can even see the possibility of adding the electronics from a USB hub to pipe USB functions over a DVI cable. And get the iSite and speakers working.
Looking to get a monitor calibrator for my powerbook. I have about 750 pictures I need to edit for print via an online print shop but am having a hard time configuring my powerbook screen. I am partially color blind and wear glasses so using software hasn't worked very well for me. I was wondering if anyone could reccomend any of the hardware monitor calibrators.
I have a 17" G4 powerbook. I would like to get a display for it. Will i have to keep my laptop open if I am using the monitor? Or will I be able to close the laptop and still use the monitor?
I've been given (!) a G5 iMac which is practically brand new. It's only problem is that it suffers from the sudden shut off issue which seems to plague the G5 thanks to a faulty Power Supply and some caps on the mobo which get taken out by the PS. I've replace the power supply, but can't afford to get the mobo fixed, and since neither Apple nor any of the alternative operating system makers such as Linux will be supporting this system into the future, I figure that the hardware is essentially orphaned. I'd dearly like to use the screen though, as it's in great shape and is a beautiful display. So, my question is, can the internal screen be connected to an external source such as the video card of another computer? It would be great to use it for my music production machine. If anyone has any ideas, let me know. In the meantime I'm going to have a look around inside this beast and see what I can do.
I've got an old 20 inch blue and white CRT monitor connected to my last rev. Powerbook G4 with RAM upped to 1.5 gigs. I also have some peripherals connected to the usb hub on the monitor and all my ports on the powerbook itself are used up as well. Basically I'm running this mainly as a desktop. So, through the day while i'm working I get these blips on the screen randomly. they are horizontal blips almost as if I've just turned the monitor on. It is seriously about a millisecond. blink of an eye. anyways the freeze happens 99% of the time right after one of these blips AND while I'm holding the mouse button (usually manually scrolling in Firefox) it freezes for a second, i get the spinning beachball, but then it turns back to the arrow.
i can move the arrow all over the place, but i cannot do anything else. option+apple+esc doesn't do anything. the scaling effect doesn't work on the dock. i can't start or quit anything. if iTunes is playing, the music plays on, yet everything else is still frozen. so I open the lid and hold down the powerbutton until it shuts down. then i start up again. i have no problems when i use the powerbook without the external monitor. so is the monitor the culprit? Do i need to get a newer monitor? could it be a problem with usb 1.0 ports on the monitor and the usb 2.0 ports on the powerbook - a conflict of interest so to speak?
