Blank grey screen on original iMac

Hello World
My 6-years daughter has been enjoying using her original iMac (Bondi Blue, 233 mhz, 96 Mo RAM, Mac OS 9.2) for three years now, without any problem.
Until yesterday. I had to plug the old boy to the net to update Quicktime (5 to 6), because some program needed to - which went perfect, but that's not the point.
Bringing it back to my daughter's room, I found that it wouldn't boot again, and kept stuck to a blank greyish screen (that was after the normal "boing" sound). The case seemed hotter than usual. I let it cool for a moment, and it finally accepted to boot up normally - just to freeze some a few minutes later.
This morning, all went well after a good night of sleep, but the iMac freezed again after some time
This time I found :
- that the case was very hot,
- that I couldn't stop the iMac (keyboard seems not to work) even by pushing the on/off button (I had to unplug it)
Any clue someone please ? We're so sad my daughter an I, the iMac is not far from being buried in our backyard along with "Red the fish"...
Really sorry for the long message, thanks to you patient readers !

PRAM battery dead.....maybe...
Unplugging your Mac from it's power source causes the battery to discharge as it tries to maintain PRAM settings and the Macs clock. If you have done this before, or often cut power off to your Mac via a power strip or wall switch, your battery may be depleted. Since it's not a rechargeable battery it'll need to be replaced. You can also check it with a voltmeter.
Even if you haven't done it before, this disconnect may have been enough to kill it, if it was weak to begin with.
I would check it first. When mine went, I had no response from my Mac at all; just a light on my power button; absolutely no boot at all. Also, try the PMU reset mentioned in the faq.
Check out things in Texas Mac Man's Battery, PRAM, PMU tutorial on the subject. His tutorial is a little dated (don't believe it even mentions G5's) but the info in it, except SMU not being included, still applies. The SMU link is for a late G5 Tower. Early G5's use PMU reset, as shown in the tutorial. The battery for late G5 + G5 iMacs and earlier iMacs, Mac Minis and Intel Tower Macs is this one.
The later Mac info was included for other readers. Your Mac uses the tutorial info.
DALE

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