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My school recycled an old XServe G5 that was still in working condition at the end of last year. Of course rather than letting school computers go to waste, another student & I often pick up a few of them (I got a 1st gen iMac w Mac OS 9, OS X, old Photoshop, etc installed. Also got a Apple IIe with Printer. I love school!). About a month or so ago, he let me have the Xserve G5 that he got. It was working when I discussed picking it up from his house. The problem is that it no longer worked after I got home (about a week after our conversation)

I've tried a few different things to see about getting it to work. A few different power cables, I've hit some button inside (following a guide online) that was supposed to reset the boot something or other, I've just let it rest, etc. There is a boot battery in there and I'm going to take it to my Physics class tomorrow to see if the battery is dead. If all else fails, I want to see if the people at Apple would be nice enough to take a look enough though it's way out of warranty & I hear they just dropped the G5 parts from the stores.

Oh, I believe it has to do something with the power supply because the fans are locked. That's why I'm checking the battery tomorrow & used a few power cords & did that one reset button inside the Xserve

I'd hope someone on here might be tech savvy enough to figure this sucker out because I'd really like to use it as a "home base" rather than my MacBook Pro (don't need to leave my MBP on & at home)

-- @YBrammer

asked Feb 13 '11 at 13:42

YBrammer's gravatar image

YBrammer
34161014

edited Feb 13 '11 at 13:48


Sounding a lot like the power supply fried. Best bet would be to look up places like powermax.com or other used mac specialty shops to see if maybe they have a PSU for it. Iirc, the G5 has a special voltage that ATX power supplies don't provide. +24V is what I think it is. Since the system is no longer being produced, the prices will change, but hard to say whether it will go down due to legacy or up due to rarity. Also, others may be able to tell you how to jury rig an ATX PSU to generate the right voltages.

Good luck with the project.

answered Feb 13 '11 at 14:16

kydruid's gravatar image

kydruid
7613

Thanks @kydruid. For some reason, even though it wasn't working this morning or for the last two months, it randomly started working just under 2 hours ago. No idea why.

Would you happen to know why a licenses for Mac OS X Server would fail though? That's my problem now! I'm using the exact same serial number as my school was using on the same machine yet it doesn't work

(Feb 13 '11 at 17:58) YBrammer YBrammer's gravatar image

Unless maybe they used that license to upgrade the box, I'm not sure why it wouldn't work. You might ask the IT folks at school to see if they'd share that old license, as some of the sources where it would be displayed wouldn't show the whole license number. Or, barring that, Tiger or Leopard Server licenses may fall into the same category as legacy spare parts and be relatively inexpensive. Wish I had some concrete ideas on this.

Best of luck.

answered Feb 13 '11 at 18:05

kydruid's gravatar image

kydruid
7613

10.4 & 10.5 Server are still fairly.expensive... unless you really need to use the latest apps, you should be fine with 10.2 server... it can be bought fairly cheap off of ebay

(Feb 13 '11 at 18:33) NickMiller NickMiller's gravatar image
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Asked: Feb 13 '11 at 13:42

Seen: 1,594 times

Last updated: Feb 13 '11 at 18:33