29 Jun
2012
29 Jun
'12
12:01 p.m.
On 29 Jun 2012, at 10:37, John Many Jars <john at yoyodyne-propulsion.net> wrote:
Check the PRAM battery is good, and replace if
necessary.
Yes, at the Mac shop, this made 98% of dead Macs come alive.
Apple got sued at the time, because the solution in the manual was
"replace the main board" for hundreds of dollars, instead of, replace
the PRAM battery, for seven dollars.
Ultimately, yes, it needs a new battery but in my experience replacing
the PRAM battery with a fresh one doesn't always work straight off the
bat - went through this with a 7300, 9600 and a G3 Blue, all needed
leaving to forget their PRAM settings before they'd power on. *Then*
when you power off and fit the new battery tgey work fine. Back in the
days when I used to hang around on the PCI PowerMacs list and the
G-List at LowEndMac this was a well known proceedure and got repeated
to people who'd already replaced the PRAM battery many times. I have
to admit I panicked the first time it happened to me on my 7300 but an
experienced tech told me how to fix it.
In Apple's defence, the difference between a dead PRAM battery/corrupt
PRAM and the symptoms of a board failure are indistinguishable, hence
why a lot of people think the machine is dead when it actually isn't.
They should at least have issued an adendum, however, so the law suit
was appropriate.
--
Mark Benson
http://markbenson.org/blog
http://twitter.com/MDBenson