G4 mini Random Shutdown; Now Won't Power On, Power Supply Problem?

Twice now, my G4 mini has simply turned off randomly. The first time, it eventually restarted, and all was good until today, when it did it again. This time, it simply won't power on, much less boot. I wanted to run this by someone else (no Mac people here but me) before I bought a second power supply.
What I've noticed:
*If I plug a cold power supply into the wall, and then into the mini, the mini lights up for maybe half a second, then turns off again.
*Then, leaving mini plugged in to the PS, if I uplug the PS from the wall, wait ~3-5 minutes, plug it back in, the mini will light up for 1/2 second again.
*If I then unplug the PS from the mini (but leaving the PS plugged into the PS), wait ~3-5 min again, then plug the PS back into the mini, nothing happens. No lights, fireworks, nada.
I have repeated every possible combination of plugged/unplugged mini/PS in several outlets throughout my building. It seems that if I have a "hot" PS the mini will not light up no matter what. If the PS is "cold", and has sat for a few minutes, the machine will try to boot.
All I can think is that something in the mini is tripping a safety on the PS, or the PS is just tripping on its own.
Bad PS?

It's possible the previous power supply failed in a way that caused damage to the system, or of course for another fault to have developed with these symptoms.
It's interesting that it worked, apparently properly, because that tends to suggest the fault is something new, or that you have power issues of another kind external to the Mac.
I would suggest you try and reset the PMU since this controls the power management functions of the system.
- Unplug all cables from the computer, including the power cord.
- Wait 10 seconds.
- Plug in the power cord while simultaneously pressing and holding the power button on the back of the computer.
- Let go of the power button.
- Press the power button once more to start up your Mac mini.
This may not help much, but it's well worth trying.

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Hi, biosmell -
I am considering pulling the internal battery in hopes it will kill the boot memory and perhaps default back to the OSX disks again.
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-Bmer
Mac Owners Support Group
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G4 mini Random Shutdown; Now Won't Power On, Power Supply Problem?

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