bobdea Posted September 16, 2005 Report Share Posted September 16, 2005 I have a Mac that when I try to turn it on as soon as I hear the hard drive start to turn on the power cuts out. any ideas on what the hell is wrong? luckily I keep everything backed up on a external drive and everthing important was backed up so when I got this one I did not even have to reinstall my apps, that was a nice surpise, it asked me to connect my old mac via firewire so I plugged in the hardrive and it worked fine. on a side note do any x86 boxes support anything like target disk mode, that basically means that you can make a mac act as a external disk connected via 1394? that feature is friggin useful when you have a mac that won't boot properly or you have another mac around, upgrade to a new one or to move files quickly. I do have to say that this was the most painless upgrade(other than buying a new PC) I have ever made, all my preferences, applications and files were imported and everything works just the same as it did before, even the 'nix tools that were a pain to get to working on the first computer. Mac OS rocks! Its funny about how you end up not being happy with some OSes, I have a couple Intel boxes here and I was just not happy using either of them, windows annoys me and linux can be a pain in the ass but at least linux keeps working after you are connected to the internet;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nils Posted September 16, 2005 Report Share Posted September 16, 2005 Does the mac boot using the target mode on the external drive? IF not: it can be a real motherboard/power failure, if it does boot, then it can be the HD that is defective ( meaning dead). I also love my mac, i wish it had more wintel apps such as acad, rhino and other pro software i cannot use on the mac :(. My laptop is a first gen titanium from 2000, its still doing great.. I know few people with year 2000 laptops from the PC world that dare to take it on travel :) N. I suggest u use apple's knowledge pages ( aka forum) u will get loads of answers. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Ninjette Posted September 16, 2005 Report Share Posted September 16, 2005 I too agree with checking out Apple's forum or section of tech notes... that may be of assistance. I have found good info there. Out of curioisity, which Mac are you on?? Is it a newer Mac or older one?? I am a Mac fan tried and true... for graphics purposes it just seems to make more sense. My power mac 7500 is now 10 years old (the production date on the back is november 1995). I dropped a G3 card in it, maxed it out on ram, put a PCI card in it to read firewire and USB and the thing is still bombproof! I recently upgraded for speed purposes and cause I could not run OSX... so my recent upgrade was to a G4 Powerbook and the thing is flippin' awesome.. a chunk of change, but by far nooooo regrets.. Not trying to spur that Mac vs. PC thing but my friend got a PC laptop at the same time and she is already having problems with it. Sounds like in general you are far more computer savvy than myself but it almost sounds like a mechanical thing? B. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skatha Posted September 18, 2005 Report Share Posted September 18, 2005 May not be a Mac problem per se....may be as simple as the power supply. Take it in and have a technician look at it. My hubbies' PC was doing the exact same thing-there's a current transformer at the plug-his was fried. Once he had it replaced, his computer ran fine Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mirror70 Posted September 18, 2005 Report Share Posted September 18, 2005 I also love my mac, i wish it had more wintel apps such as acad, rhino and other pro software i cannot use on the mac :(. Acad makes baby Jesus cry. Wildfire and Solidworks both work surprisingly well in VirtualPC on my 2x1.4Ghz G4 desktop though. OS X also runs great on my Dell 700m. Can't wait for Apple's official OS x86 release. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nils Posted September 18, 2005 Report Share Posted September 18, 2005 i wish i was able to drop acad :) (using mostly in 2D) but since i'm in a middle of a huge construction network with engineers and builders just using it, I cant. I'm sometimes working with 200-300 plans that are linked together, and I tried once to convert them in and out of acad...gone crazy! Yes may apple release a intel version of OSX, at least so we can get rid of XP! :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobdea Posted September 19, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 19, 2005 it won't let me get as far as target disk mode, so I assume its one of the two I am using a new mac now but I would love to salvage the old one as it does great for email, web browsing and anything else that is not too CPU intensive Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RCrobar Posted September 19, 2005 Report Share Posted September 19, 2005 Hi Bob I have a Mac that when I try to turn it on as soon as I hear the hard drive start to turn on the power cuts out. any ideas on what the hell is wrong? I’ve had the same problem a few times before, I run an Apple network. Most of the time, in my case, it turned out to be the battery. Yup, the small inexpensive battery that maintains all your preferences then the computer is unplugged. The batteries are cheap and are easy to swap. It’s worth a try, especially on an older Mac. Rob Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nils Posted September 19, 2005 Report Share Posted September 19, 2005 yes forgot the battery trick on the motherboard :) Had the problem years ago too on a PPC 7100! N. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bobdea Posted September 19, 2005 Author Report Share Posted September 19, 2005 I have know that little battery is junk for about 3 years because my it always loses all the pram settings when when the computer is unplugged for more than a minute or so. gonna have to check the apple store and see if they have one, its on my way home! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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