I posted the message “black screen of death on Imac” last week, but I thought of opening a new case because this seems like a well known problem with Imacs. This problem started to happen out of nowhere. No changes has been done before problem occurrence (no installation, no OS updates). This is with a CTR Imac (first generation) When I boot up the Imac, you can hear the hard drive reading data but the screen doesn’t come up. Solutions I found : Update to Mac OS 8.6 : done : didn’t work Clock battery : done : didn’t change it because the clock is fine on the Imac Update Bios : didn't touch that, pretty sure its not the cause...because nothing has changed Change video card : I’ve been told by a store that it cost 250-300 canadian dollars ($150-200 US) plus work Any other solution before I use the baseball bat ? Mathieu

Update your firmware, as was suggested last time, and make sure the clock battery is putting out at least 3.3V whether the clock is running right or not. p

thanks for your answer, but how can I check the battery voltage !!!...never done it. Do you know of a web site tha shows pictures of were iMacs part are located...this thing is not easy to open up! Were is that clock battery? I really tried to check the firmware version in Apple system profiler....but really couldn't find it...does it have another name? I alse tried to find the latest compatible firmware version compatible with my MAC....couldn't find it at apple.com thanks for your help Mathieu

By the way, I think that I found the clock battery...is it a 3.6V 1/2 AA battery size? Mathieu

Yes, that's it. p

Just to finish the case... I brought my computer a Mac repair store and they told me that it was the Analog Video Card!...200$ canadian. They told me that it cost that much because the video card is onboard...so you have to change the piece all together...very fun...and expensive thanks for your help Mr. "the pickle" Mathieu