[MLUG] urgent hardware trouble shooting problem

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

This is slightly off-topic since it's a Mac OSX box, but I'm in a tight spot. 

Today is a busy week, with conferences (two of them) I leave for on
Wedneday.  Naturally, I have two posters to finish, and one of which I
really and truly wanted to finish tonight.

But my dual G4 powermac was hung when I came to the office.  "That's
odd" I thought, since the sucker basically never crashes.  But I
restart it and...it doesn't restart.  After a few repetitions of that,
I look inside the case.  The disk is one of those great IBM Deathstar
models.  "S-word!" I say.  But, oddly enough, it looks like the disk
is spinning up when I try to restart.  It's just that nothing further
happens.  "OK", I say.  "I'll boot off of my install CD and find out
what's wrong there".  Nice idea, except I can't boot off my CD in a
normal way (trivia: hold down C key while booting).  That's good news
and bad news, I think.  The good news is that it's less likely it's my
disk that's screwed, since I can't boot off of anything.  The bad news
is that I can't boot off of anything.  (The helpful icon here is the
"barred circle" (don't walk) after many minutes.

So what the heck could be wrong?  I think I can rule out hard disk
alone, and since the disk spins up, the CD door can open and close,
and the fan runs (loudly, as always) I suspect it's not the power
supply.  So am I actually looking at something like Mr. Logic Board? 
If so, *gack*.  Where the heck am I going to find anybody who has one
of those guaranteed tomorrow?  Does anybody else have any good ideas? 
I think I may be reduced to trying to take the HD and install it into
a firewire enclosure and attempt a brain transplant.  Anything else
you'd try?

So far, Google has given me no joy on this, but I might be too
panicked to be trying the correct search words.  <Sob.>

jking
_______________________________________________
members mailing list
EMAIL:PROTECTED
http://mlug.missouri.edu/mailman/listinfo/members