PowerMac Moniter Dead

I have a PowerMac 5400/200 and one day I tried restarting it and the moniter wouldn't turn on. There is a little green light 1mm high and 10mm wide below the floppy drive that wouldn't turn on, either.

I opened it up and took out the motherboard, and nothing unusual popped out at me. I asked a friend and he said it was probably a dead battery, and that he had had this problem before. I went to a battery specialty store and found the exact one I needed, installed it, and yet the moniter still won't turn on. I took out all the upgrades, like the extra RAM, USB port additions, and the Ethernet network card. I pressed the reset button, to reset the motherboard to it's original configuration, and the moniter was still dormant after restart. :bnghd:

At this point I was ready to throw the whole farking thing out the window, so I went downstairs for a snack and watched some TV. After feeling less stressed out, I went back upstairs and decided to post a thread about this in BTS.

Does anybody know anything about this type of problem? I'm a real electronics geek and extremely computer-literate and I can't figure it out.


Edit: I forgot to say this, but the entire computer starts up, it's just the moniter that won't. The little Mac "startup chime" plays and the harddrive spins itself, plus after it starts up I'm able to press the power key, hit return, and it will shut itself down. I apologize if you thought that I am stupid and didn't plug it in or something.

[edit on 1/25/2005 by diehard_democrat]

Maybe the power supply to the monitor has just died? Have you not got a warranty or anything? I take it this thing is an all in one unit?

All in one, yes. The link goes to a picture of it (not "it" as in my computer, just the exact same model)

Power supply, you say? Hmm, I'll have to check that out.

The warrenty is long gone. Bought the computer in 1997.

Did a google search on this problem and found out some other guy hooked an external moniter to his 5400 and the internal one started working again. I'd try that, but I don't have an external moniter to use

d_d, why not try to use your iMac as another screen?

www.belowtopsecret.com...'

All you need is a cable.

Sanc'.

[edit on 26-1-2005 by sanctum]

Is that possible? I've never heard of anybody doing that before using an iMac.

You guys! You guys guess what?! I removed the motherboard in an attempt to try to get it to go one more time before heading off to CompUSA and I removed the extra RAM, ethernet card, USB ports, and the video card and the moniter turned itself on! I have absolutely no idea what was actually wrong with it but who cares?

Then I realized the harddrive had major errors and Disk Utility couldn't repair them (of course). So now I've got a completely different problem on my hands.

Oh well... Maybe I'll just take the harddrive out, run a magnet over it, and reinstall the entire system from the CD.

Ummmmm.... that was a bit overenthusiastic. I was just really exited at the time the moniter finally started up...

I did have a look inside the computer and believe me Apple does not make it easy. And it's gotten even more difficult with their newer computers like the iMac, iMac G5 (space saver), and most likely the Mac Mini too.

Back on topic: The system starts up displaying the warning "This system was not shut down properly. Disk First Aid will check the harddrive for errors". And then less than one second later: "ERROR: The harddrive was checked and found to have errors that this program cannot repair." Why don't they just put "You got screwed by a f***ing Mac! Ha ha ha ha ha!" instead, because it basically means the same thing.

Now the system is fine except for the harddrive-error dialog that shows up at startup, which I can turn off, and the fact that it's a Mac. (BURN!!!!)

Try Norton Utilities to fix the disk, it can repair disks that the built-in utility can't.