Greetings and thanks for reading this topic. I have a Rev A original imac that died a few weeks ago. Technicians at compusa said it was probably a problem with the video card/ram. who knows. anyway, i replaced the motherboard, and installed a new battery. now, when i turn on the imac, it chimes and accesses the hard drive for a couple seconds and then shuts istelf down. once its off, it wont start again unless i reset the logic board. I doubt this could be a logic board problem since the computer wouldnt even *begin* to boot with the old board. To save the data on the, i took it out and mounted it on a TiBook and dumped the data. Could the hard drive be causing the imac to behave like this? or could it be ram? any other suggestions? Thanks for any suggestions.

It sounds like a classic power/analog/video board failure, but the Rev. A (Bondi blue, I'm assuming) had a separate power supply and analog/video board, IIRC. Since it's obviously powering up to some extent, then it seems the power supply is *probably* OK. I'd lean towards the analog/video board. If you were able to mount the hard drive in another machine, then that shouldn't really be causing the problem. The easiest way to confirm is to power the iMac on with the HD out, booting to a CD (or even without the CD, you should still get the flashing disk or folder icons). If you've already invested in replacing the logic board, then you may as well dump a few more $$ on the analog/video board. -Chad

Thanks for the pointer, Chad. Ive tried searching for vendors that sell iMac video boards but i just keep finding places that will exchange or repair the board if i send them the computer and whatnot. Id like to just buy the board and install it myself. Does anyone know where i can buy an iMac video board? Thanks

Your best bet is probably a place like: http://www.cpservices.com/. Repairs are significantly less expensive than an outright purchase. I think for iMac p/a/v boards, they charge somewhere around $75 for a repair with a 6 month warranty. If you can find one, it's probably going to cost upwards of $150 to purchase a new or refurbed one (without an defective part for exchange) with any warranty at all. You might also be able to find another similar iMac on eBay or elsewhere that someone's parting out. Of course, those are almost always sold "as-is" so the p/a/v board could be deader-n-a-doornail. -Chad