I have long suspected that there is an incompatibility between the nVidia GeForce 6600 video card in the unit and the monitor to which it is attached (a ViewSonic VP2130b), since the monitor will not always detect the video and display anything after a boot up. My thoughts turn to defeating this issue once and for all. Who knows when it may raise its head again. The no chime scenario has been once again banished. I can report that the G5 has been successfully booting ever since. Had reseating the video card ACTUALLY accomplished this result, or was it just a random co-incidence? I honestly don’t know, and given the difficulty inherent in accomplishing the reseat, I don’t plan to experiment with it again until a “no chime” situation occurs in the future.
#Used mac g5 quad mac os
With no real expectation of success, I hit the power button and to my complete surprise, I was rewarded with a robust chime and a full and successful boot up of Mac OS X. After about half an hour of fuming and fussing with it, I finally accomplished a reseat of the video card, wondering whether I had damaged the card in the process of attempting this seemingly nonsensical “fix”. This tab steadfastly resisted all efforts to remove the card, and then, when I finally prevailed in that task, proved equally effective at inhibiting the re-insertion of the card. Reseating the card was a LOT more difficult than it sounds, due in no small part to the fact that removal of the card was impeded by a small plastic tab on the corner of the PCI-E slot into which the card was plugged. The location of this card is shown in the image below. Although the concept made no sense to me in the context of this problem, I decided to try reseating the card, an nVidia GeForce 6600. This left only one path – reseating the video card. I attached a different monitor and hopefully powered on the G5.
With nothing to lose and nowhere else to turn, I decided to try this. Countless web authors stated that reseating the video card, or simply attaching a different monitor, would miraculously rouse the sleeping beast and return the G5 to a working state.
Happily, a pattern started to emerge in my research, suggesting that it could be a monitor or video card related issue.
Frustrated, I dug back into Google and once again went through everything I could find on this problem and its solution. The machine stubbornly refused to chime and boot. Maybe I hadn’t waited long enough with the machine unplugged? Maybe the PRAM battery was dead? Maybe I needed to try using the infamous, and usually totally ineffective, SMU Reset button on the motherboard? I walked through all of these potential solutions, but to no avail. It not only didn’t chime, it didn’t do much of anything else at all, except spin up the hard disk and run the fans, both of which were clearly audible. I was more than just a little disappointed when it didn’t do either.
The next day, I plugged the G5 Dual back in and confidently hit the power button, expecting it to chime either right away, or on the second attempt. This is surprising, since my other Power Mac G5, a 2.5 GHz G5 Quad (also a late 2005 offering), has never once exhibited this behavior.Īt any rate, I smiled knowingly to myself when I unexpectedly encountered the all too familiar “no startup chime” situation on my G5 Dual a few days ago, and of course I followed the solution recipe that I had posted in my earlier piece on this problem – I unplugged the machine and let it sit overnight, the objective of which was to cause the on board SMU to reset. This particular machine seems to get into this state once a year or so. I recently had this problem occur again, once more on my original personal Mac, a late 2005 2.3 GHz Power Mac G5 Dual. Researching on Google, it was clear that this was a fairly common problem, and I was pleased to be able to share a solution for it. Some time back (February 2015), I posted a piece on recovering from no startup chime on a Power Mac G5.
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