iMac G5: Up In Smoke

I had a very similar problem with my 20-inch iMac G5:

• Toxic smell in my office, sniffed it out from the Mac
• Called Apple support, got thru relatively easily, correct diagnosis of power supply, promise that replacement power supply would be shipped overnight
• Two days later it had not been shipped, support said the power supply was “out of stock” and a “parts search” would ensue, possible ship date 1-7 days
• Part actually shipped out from a San Diego service center the next day, but they sent it DHL which has poor service to our rural area, I had to wait almost a week
• When it arrived, quick and easy swap, problem solved, sent the old supply back.
  

I also went through cycles of being impressed and dismayed with Apple. Thus it ever was.
===========================
David Houghton P.E.
Resource Engineering Group, Inc.

[forwarded with permission]

From: <TR3aol.com>
Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 07:48:03 -0700
To: <matttidbits.com>
Subject: Me too

Matt,

FYI - I bought my iMacg5 (20 inch) when they became available and a month
ago, the midplane failed - along with the hard disk - lost all of my
applications. Like you, I saw it coming and tried to back up the disk -
unfortunately (and fortunately) it was almost too late. Saved data, not
applications. Had to bring in to local Apple Store - took them a few days
to fix. They, too, more or less admitted this was a common problem. Just
thought you'd like to know. It IS frustrating.

Tripp Frohlichstein

Similar story (I posted a bunch online at the Apple site). Except I'm not sure that the problem is still not lurking.

1 - Sept, bought the iMac G5 for my daughter who just started college in NYC.

2 - Nov, the hard drive failed with bad sectors clobbering the partion map. Finally found Data Rescue and recovered the disk - but it took 3 days. Reformatted the drive and went on.

3 - Jan. Drive failed again. massive numbers of sectors. Took me a week to recover about 95% of her files, got a second drive from Apple. Discovered that you can monitor internal temperatures, and found Apple is running the disk temperature only 1.5 degrees C from its rated Maximum of 55C.

4 - Two weeks later, in Feb, new drive failed catastrophically. It made a horrible grinding noise. I ran the Apple Hardware Test and the damn thing told me everything, INCLUDING THE DRIVE, was fine. [I filed a bug report on teh developer site! How ridiculous is that!.

Apple sent me a new drive and a new midplane (after I spent time online with them, then on the phone.) I like you was not sure that was the issue (I actually thought maybe its the power supply). The new midplane had a video problem with the graphics chip, so I sent it back.

I am using the Apple labeled Maxtor 250G drive as a spare, and I bought a IBM/Hitachi drive to replace the original. I read that this drive has the lowest consumption in that class drive, and with two failed Maxtor drives I wasn't about to go through the process again.

It would appear that this product was rushed to market and not shaken out. As you mentioned, the boards are full of reports of failures - how can it not effect the bottom line?

Like you, my daughter loves the Mac (has used one since childhood), but she has a hard time selling it to her classmates when it keeps failing so often. We are both backing up stuff all the time now. I use Backup 2 to backup her homework to my .Mac account every day. I also set the machine to never sleep the CPU.

Best wishes,

David

I had exactly the same problem as Matt in January, but unlike Matt I did replace the midplane and then had to wait for a power supply when the midplane did not fix the problem. They were back ordered (I was only told this after I had twice been told that it was shipping the day I called) and I had to wait 10 days. It seems this was a widespread problem as it consumed all there spare power supplies.

Once I replace the power supply it booted, but then the screen had a yellow hue and occasionally flickered. So I was told to replace the inverter. After that did not work I was set the front bezel - that is the whole front of the computer including the screen. That finally fixed the problem and the computer has been running well ever since.

The whole process took over a month. The only remaining parts of the original computer are the optical drive, the hard drive and the back panel.

I did not experience the problems Matt had contacting apple staff, but like Matt I was frustrated at misdiagnosis on the website, the delays in shipping parts and the lack of any real information on the website showing the progress of the parts shipments.

I wondered whether I had damaged a cable when I replace the midplane and that was why the screen broke. The result of my experience was that a bought Applecare. I did not want to be told that I need to pay $1200 for a new midplane 12 months form now. Normally I only consider Applecare for laptops as all the desktop Macs I have bought over the years have given me no problem.

[Forwarded with permission:]

Matt

Thanks for the article

We can report two iMac G5 1.6GHz power failures (both bought in Jan 2005),
repaired by the applecentre, but one went pop (plus the smell) and the other
started to crackle and we sent that in for pre-emptive repair and was told
that the power supply had also failed. The third has yet to go, but we are
watching it and backing up daily. Likewise we have always looked at Apple
machines are totally reliable, but with 2 eMac hard disk failures within 2
months of purchase plus the iMac problems, we are cautious .. but still
mac-centric.

Cheers
Nick Haycock

____________________________________________________________

Haycock Associates Limited
Red Roof, Wick Road, Little Comberton, Pershore, WORCS, WR10 3EG
Tel: +44 (0) 1386 556004
Mobile: 07799 661090
email: nehaycockhaycock-associates.co.uk
web: http://www.haycock-associates.co.uk

Registered Office: Red Roof, Wick Road, Little Comberton, Pershore,
WORCS, WR10 3EG
Registered in England No. 03934665 VAT No. GB 658 1644 14
____________________________________________________

Just idle curiosity here, but so far it sounds like just the 20"
model. Any counter-examples?

On Apr 26, 2005, at 3:59 PM, David Houghton wrote:

> I had a very similar problem with my 20-inch iMac G5:

I've found silverkeeper (http://www.lacie.com/silverkeeper/) to be very
useful for backing up hard drives (you can set it to automatically back
up just the changed files every hour). Its something we all urge people
to do, and then fail to do it ourselves.

Last year I bought a refurbished 12 inch powerbook from the Apple store.
Great machine except the hard drive died 89 days into its 90 days
warrenty. Apple gave me really prompt service (2 hrs after ringing up
support, DHL were outside the door with a box to send it in for repair)
and I had the machine back within 4 days.
Needless to say I bought Applecare on the 90th day.

I did lose some data though (and six months of email) so now I back up
regularly. Not backing up is a mistake many laptop users do.


Paul

At 12:59 PM 04/26/2005 -0700, dhoerl wrote:
>We are both backing up stuff all the time now.

Just to link back to another thread ...

BACK UP EVERYTHING EVERY DAY. Mac, Windows, Unix, all the others. 1965,
1975, 1985, 1995, 2005. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

Do it whether you've been having trouble or not. Doing backups after you
notice problems is closing the barn door when the horse is gone. Once you
have trouble, you need backups taken before the trouble.

Use a good backup program which does incremental backups; this reduces the
time to a reasonable amount.

EVERY DAY. EVERYTHING.

Edward
Art Works by Melynda Reid: http://paleo.org

[Forwarded by permission.]

From: Kelly Hobkirk <kellyhtrain-of-thought.com>
Reply-To: Kelly Hobkirk <kellyhtrain-of-thought.com>
Date: Mon, 25 Apr 2005 22:51:29 -0700
To: <matttidbits.com>
Subject: Re: iMac G5: Up In Smoke

Dear Matt,

Sadly, I could relate such a story about nearly every Mac I have ever owned
-- that's nine machines out of ten. Not that they have all had a similar
problem to yours, but they have all had major hardware failures that Apple
has been lackadaisical in fixing. The most recent is the PowerBook G4 that
has had the screen replaced four times, and is in need of a fifth.

Worse than the hardware failures though are the personnel and procedure
failures. Apple has developed a Case Number system that shifts the balance
power for any resolution of hardware failure into their favor. By having a
Case Number system that is entirely dependent on their own employees taking
good notes, Apple can easily say, "There are no notes to verify what you are
saying you were told." This has happened to me at least half a dozen times.
For instance, with the aforementioned PowerBook G4, one of Apple's Tier 2
tech support people told me last month that Apple would be extending my
AppleCare for the screen for six months beyond the expiration of my support
plan. She also said if anything major went wrong with the system in the next
month or so, Apple would replace it. Today when I called to have the screen
replaced yet again, after sitting on hold for 45 minutes, I was told that
they "rarely extend the AppleCare plans, and there were no notes indicating
this one was to be extended, nor that the machine is to be replaced due to
another major failure." Strangely, they did manage to locate the note made
by the same person on the same day that a spare battery was to be sent out.
It had not been sent out, but they saw that one month ago, it was supposed
to have gone out.

Apple has an astonishingly consistent record of treating hardware failures
as no big deal. I am convinced that Apple views their own computers as
nothing more than semi-relevant toys. If they really thought of them as
necessary business machines, and if they truly valued their customer base,
Apple would overhaul their support system from the ground up.

After all of the misgivings I have had to endure with Apple, the _only_
reason I am still using their computers is due to the fact that the design
industry is a Mac-based industry. With the recent merging of Adobe and
Macromedia, and the ever-narrowing gap between cross-platform applications'
converted files, I am already starting to shift my workload to more reliable
IBM machines. The primary reasons for this are that the hardware simply
works better and is more reliable, the operating system is more stable and
more robust, and ultimately, IBM provides infinitely better support than
does Apple.

I never thought I would switch to IBM, but Apple is certainly doing their
best to get rid of me as a loyal customer.

Kelly Hobkirk

On 26 Apr 2005, at 13:59 :25, lhorthy wrote:

> Normally I only consider Applecare for laptops as all the desktop
> Macs I have bought over the years have given me no problem.
>

I've amended that to include any integrated LCD mac. The iLamps or
new iMacs. The screens are just to expensive to risk having one go
bad, and it's not like you can run out and buy another and hook it up.


--
If we get through this alive I'll meet you next week same place same
time

[forwarded with permission]

------ Forwarded Message
> From: Jim Curland <curlandearthlink.net>
> Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 10:25:12 -0700
> To: <matttidbits.com>
> Subject: iMac G5-Up in Smoke
>
> Matt,
>
> I read your article in the latest Tidbits. Having purchased an iMac G5
> 17" in February, this stirred some concerns for me. So much so, that I
> called Apple's Tech support line today and spoke to a product
> specialist. Essentially he told me to not pay attention to as he coined
> it, "everything you read on the internet". I told him that it seemed as
> if you did your homework and I was just calling more as a preemptive
> strike to see if Apple was aware of this problem and how were they
> dealing with it. This product specialist indicated that this is an
> extremely rare problem and he is only familiar with one case where this
> has happened. He said Apple is tracking any of these related cases to
> see if there is a pattern and how they might deal with it. It didn't
> give me much consolation. I was hoping that your reporting of this
> problem might have led Apple to a pre-emptive strike to prevent future
> iMac G5 customers from experiencing what you did. They aren't doing
> that. So, it sounds like I would need to cross my fingers and pray that
> my machine isn't one of the unlucky ones. The biggest concern is I work
> from a home office and my iMac G5 is the lifeblood for my work.
>
> thanks,
>
>
> Jim
>
> --
> Jim Curland, Marine Program Associate
> Defenders of Wildlife
> P.O. Box 959
> Moss Landing, CA. 95039
> 831-726-9010 (phone)
> 831-726-9020 (fax)
>
> http://www.defenders.org
> http://www.kidsplanet.org


------ End of Forwarded Message

Thanks for the article (warning!) on iMac G5 and their failing power supplies.

Six months ago a buddy in Silicon Valley called. He is a long-time
Windows user, but was frustrated and fed up with the software
(infested with spyware and adware) and the hardware. He wanted to
switch.

I flew in the weekend Apple opened one of the new boutique stores, in
the very chi chi Stanford Center. We'd checked the Redwood City store
on Friday and they were sold out of 17" G5 iMac, so decided to check
the new Stanford Center store Saturday morning (on the logic that a
new store should have complete stock). We arrived about thirty
minutes before opening, and the queue was about 150 people long.
Cancelled that plan and went back to Redwood City where we bought a
new 20".

This single AirPort Extreme-equipped iMac (plus an AirPort Express)
now does duty for him, his wife and a family of four.

He likes the system enough that I recently got an email asking how to
install a Mac mini in his office, to provide music to the stereo
system. So, thanks also for the article on Mac mini websites. I'll be
referring to it as I design this new system.

However, given the number of failures indicated by the references,
I'll also recommend he preemptively call Apple and get a new power
supply ordered for the iMac.

Dan

On Apr 27, 2005, at 10:04 AM, dano wrote:

> However, given the number of failures indicated by the references,
> I'll also recommend he preemptively call Apple and get a new power
> supply ordered for the iMac.

This seems like a bit of an over-reaction. According to Apple's most
recent financial statements, since last October Apple has shipped over
900,000 iMacs, minis and eMacs. They don't split these numbers out into
the different machines, but I suspect the large majority of these are
G5 iMacs and a good fraction of those are 20" iMacs. I don't know how
many 20" G5 iMacs have turned up with dead power supplies, but if
250,000 of the shipped machines were 20" iMacs, then a 2% failure rate
would be 5,000 dead machines. This could easily account for the number
of reports we've seen.

Of course a 2% failure rate is not good, but it's also not reason for
every iMac owner to request a new power supply.

PS. I'm writing this on a 20" iMac G5 that I've had since November 1 or
so with (knock wood) no problems.

--
Chris Goedde

At 10:15 AM -0700 4/28/05, Chris Goedde wrote:
>Of course a 2% failure rate is not good, but it's also not reason
>for every iMac owner to request a new power supply.

Unless industry standards have changed dramatically, 2% is very, very
good. IIRC, industry norms are between 3% and 5%. The Internet and
Apple's natural media magnification makes whatever happens to them
seem extraordinary. If not for Matt, no one outside Apple's support
boards would have ever heard of this. (Indeed, Matt's article was
the first I've heard of it.)

I once rode herd on a deployment of $500,000 worth of laptops to
students. The out-of-box DOA rate was about 10% -- that was nearly
crippling, and required units to be trucked in from all over country.

--
Andrew Laurence
atlaurenuci.edu

The iMac G5 article had the following sentence:

"I expected the computer to fail soon, but at that moment it was still running, so I immediately backed it up, twice - once to four DVDs, and again by synchronizing it with my trusty iBook G3/600."

Would someone help me with how to synchronize two iBooks, a G4 and a G3?

Thank you.

Edna Brandt

On May 5, 2005, at 12:58 PM, ebchi wrote:

> The iMac G5 article had the following sentence:
>
> "I expected the computer to fail soon, but at that moment it was still
> running, so I immediately backed it up, twice - once to four DVDs, and
> again by synchronizing it with my trusty iBook G3/600."
>
> Would someone help me with how to synchronize two iBooks, a G4 and
> a G3?

The simplest way is to use hard drive replication software such as
Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html) or
SuperDuper! (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
SuperDuperDescription.html). Carbon Copy Cloner is free (with
donations accepted), but does not run under Tiger; SuperDuper is
$19.95, with what seems to be a fully-functional demo mode before you
register, and runs under Tiger.

The basic idea behind both of those software packages is that they
make a complete copy of one hard drive onto another. This means you
need to figure out which computer is the one that gets duplicated and
which one is the drive that gets replaced, and consolidate all of
your important files onto that computer. Then you boot one of the
computers in target disk mode (by holding down T when you power on
the computer), connect them with a Firewire cable, and run the
duplication software to duplicate the files. It will take several
hours the first time, depending on the speed of your computers and
the size of the hard drive, but after that just updating the drive
with changes will only take 20 minutes or so.

If what you want is to synchronize documents, so that you can work on
one computer, synchronize it, work on the other computer, and
synchronize it, this solution is probably not the best -- it's better
for situations where one of the drives is a backup drive. There are
other solutions for that approach, which requires more intelligence
from the synchronization software. Both Carbon Copy Cloner and
Super Duper! assume that one drive is the correct one and the other
one is a backup; if you have files changed on both drives that you
want reconciled, or you just want the later version on whichever
drive to be preserved, you need something with more intelligence than
either one of those software packages has. I've heard good things
about Executive Sync, but I haven't actually used it.

(I'm dealing with this now, because my Powerbook's hard drive is
threatening to die soon, and so I'm backing it up three or four times
a day to an external Firewire drive so that I can still get work done
without much fear while I'm waiting for a replacement drive to get
here.)

Charlton



--
Charlton Wilbur
cwilburchromatico.net

Charlton Wilbur on 5/5/05 wrote something to the effect of:

>The simplest way is to use hard drive replication software such as
>Carbon Copy Cloner (http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html) or
>SuperDuper! (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/
>SuperDuperDescription.html).

If all you want is simple hard disk duplication, you can just use Disk Utility in
Panther (Mac OS X 10.3).

I ran into problems using Carbon Copy Cloner last year where not everything was copied
properly. Then I found that within Disk Utility there's a "Restore" option which lets
you copy one drive to another. Just connect the two computers via Firewire and restore
from one to the other for an exact duplicate. All files, permissions, etc. come across
just fine. You can also use this to make a bootable backup drive with an external hard
drive.

If you already have Panther, this a free solution.

-- Marc

______________________________________________________________________
      Marc Zeedar * Publisher * REALbasic Developer Magazine
                    <http://www.rbdeveloper.com/>

> This seems like a bit of an over-reaction. ...

> Of course a 2% failure rate is not good, but it's also not reason for
> every iMac owner to request a new power supply.
>
> PS. I'm writing this on a 20" iMac G5 that I've had since November 1 or
> so with (knock wood) no problems.

I too am sending this from my 20" iMac which I purchased back in November!

So far, I have had no problems and I hope it remains that way. Not many Mac
owners will send emails to lists like this saying their machine is OK, so its
important not to get over worried when we see so many examples of failure.

(Now I really must find something wooden to touch!!)

Francis

I am a videographer and after editing all week long on my 2 week old G5 imac 20inch ... it just crashed for no reason! Now when i turn it on, the screen stays black and the fans crank on super loud.