Rob
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Posts: 17
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Post by Rob on Mar 1, 2013 22:31:18 GMT
I've just joined the board and am a bit iffy about asking for help on my first posting, but here goes... (OK, I'll post an intro message after I've posted this one ) When I bought my new 21.5" iMac in late 2009, my wife inherited my 1.9 G5 17" iMac that had served me well for a good few years. It has worked brilliantly for the last 3 years or so, but now it is acting up a bit. The machine is switched off every night and when it is re-booted in the morning, more often than not, it will fail to boot up. It chimes OK and the grey screen with the apple logo and the spinning grey wheel appears, but then the fans come on at full blast and nothing more happens. This can happen two or three times before it eventually boots OK. I've run the disc checks in Disc Utility and everything checks out OK, and I've reset the PRAM but it's still acting up. I've a horrible feeling that it's coming up to the end of its life, which is a shame as I had a good few years out of it and SWMBO has had another couple of years, but it is getting long in the tooth and maybe it's time to send it to the great Mac graveyard (aka Ebay spares/repars listing) as it's not worth much these days. Any suggestions?
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Post by Forum Cat on Mar 6, 2013 0:55:01 GMT
Well, with an older machine there is much to go wrong and the cost of repair may not be worth it. I would run a decent hardware checking app like TechTools Pro but it is not a cheap app. If you don't have an app like this there is one thing you should do now. BACKUP. I suggest a clone made with the App Super Duper Then with the backup working I would restore the Mac to factory settings and see if that resolves things. If not how about a trip down to your Apple dealer for a hardware checkup.
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Rob
New Member
Posts: 17
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Post by Rob on Mar 7, 2013 21:47:43 GMT
If you don't have an app like this there is one thing you should do now. BACKUP. If not how about a trip down to your Apple dealer for a hardware checkup. I do the occasional backup on her machine, but to be honest, there's very little that needs backing up as it's only used for email (she uses T'bird, so I need to back up her saved emails and contact details) web browsing and the occasional letter, so there's not a lot of stuff that is irreplaceable. I can't justify spending any money on the machine so taking it to an Apple dealer is out of the question (the authorised nearest one is about an hour's drive away in Lichfield...), so I think that we'll continue with the weekly backup ( I use Carbon Copy Cloner) and wait for it to finally stick its legs in the air. If (when) that happens, I'll whip out the HDD and hopefully I'll be able to rescue anything not backed up using my USB HDD enclosure thingy. 20" C2D Aluminium iMacs seem to be reasonably affordable on Ebay these days, so we'll probably go for one of those as a replacement as I no longer have any monitors kicking around, so a Mini or a Pro would need the additional expenditure on a decent monitor. I'm pretty sure that the HDD is fine - it passes all the SMART tests. I suspect the graphics circuitry - my old B/W G3 had an (expensive) Formac GFX card in it when I acquired it and it often took a couple of attempts to boot, once I replaced the GFX card with a five quid Ebay original card it worked perfectly. I do like my iMacs, but have worries about failure of individual components that are not easy/impossible for a rank amateur like me to replace. The DVD drive in my 2009 iMac packed up last year, Apple wanted £150+ to replace it and I really don't fancy pulling the screen out to replace it myself, so I bought a cheapo USB drive from Amazon for the occasional times I need to burn or read a CD/DVD.
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Post by Forum Cat on Mar 11, 2013 19:33:28 GMT
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Rob
New Member
Posts: 17
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Post by Rob on Mar 14, 2013 16:10:42 GMT
He's a regular on the British Tech Network Mac podcast. He's based in Cirencester, which is a bit far from here to drop off the iMac, and I wouldn't really fancy trusting it to the Post Office, even though I still have the original box/packaging... It's all a bit irrelevant now as I've just bought her a s/h Core 2 Duo Mac Mini complete with keyboard/monitor and mouse and 4Gb RAM. Once this arrives and is set up I'll try to find the original install DVD (I know it's somewhere in the house, I saw the case with the G5 discs in when I was looking for something else, but I'm buggered if I can remember where...) and see of a complete re-install will bring it back to life. If it does, I'll use it with my TV dongle plugged in as a spare TV.
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Rob
New Member
Posts: 17
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Post by Rob on Mar 20, 2013 21:15:41 GMT
I'm very impressed with the Mac Mini. It's a 2 Ghz C2D whose HDD has been replaced with a 120GB SSD and the RAM maxed out to 4Gb. It's a lot quicker to boot than my 3Ghz iMac as you would expect and seems very nippy in general use. SWMBO is very happy with it as it's so much quicker than the 1.9 G5 iMac she was used to. The monitor it came with is a no-name 19" widescreen LCD which is currently connected via the (supplied) DVI adapter and VGA lead. I'm awaiting delivery (from Ebay) of a DVI cable to get a better resolution and perhaps a better display - it's a little washed out compared to my iMac, but it could be that the monitor's a bit old, it's still very usable though. Has anyone got any recommendations for a webcam with built-in mic for a Mini? I've been looking at the Macally IceCam2 for £17 which seems a reasonable deal. We don't need an expensive webcam, just something that will play nicely with Skype and Facetime.
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Post by Forum Cat on Mar 22, 2013 16:23:14 GMT
I like the look of that cam. Very Mac like.
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