Quicksilver trying to power on, but cannot.....

Question

My Quicksilver G4 has a recently installed 30GB hard drive. It also has new RAM installed (512MB). I tried to power up the computer: The button lights up fo a second or two, I can hear slight whirring from the inside (as if it is trying to power on), but it stops and the light fades out quickly after that. I never get any farther. I tried resetting the PRAM on the logic board and disconnecting the hard drive, but it does not help anything. Could a monitor adapter cause this if I connected an older Powermac 9600 monitor to it? Please help. I want my G4 back up and running...

Answer 1

Hi, Ely970 -
Welcome to Apple's Discussions.
Try resetting the PMU -
Article #HT1939 - Resetting CUDA/PMU
Also, if you've never replaced the machine's internal battery, that may have become too weak or dead. The expected life of that battery is 4 to 5 years under best-case circumstances; one that's too weak or dead can cause booting problems. You can get a replacement at places like RadioShack for about US$17, cheaper on-line.
It is possible that when you were inside the machine (new hard drive, new RAM) you may have dislodged one of the internal cables. Make sure those are well-seated in their connectors.
Make sure the new RAM is firmly seated in its socket - the little plastic fingers at the ends of the slot should be pushed to vertical when the RAM module is all the way in.
When you installed the new hard drive, did you confirm its jumpers were set properly? That model does not handle Cable Select well. It's better to use the Master or Slave jumper settings, as appropriate: with only one drive, use Master; with two drives, set one to Master and the other to Slave. Exception - Western Digital (WD) drives often have a third jumper position, Single, which is to be used when the drive is the only one on the bus.