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1.25 Ghz eMacs Failing?

Monday May 1, 2006 1:58 pm PDT by longofest
It appears as though a significant number of 1.25 Ghz eMac users are suffering from logic board breakdowns that cause video to become distorted. Although Apple's included diagnostic utilities indicate that all hardware is operating normally, opening up the machines reveals bulging and cracked capacitors.

Most of the issues are occurring out of the eMac's 1-year standard warranty, and Apple has yet to set up any sort of extended repair service (although some are having limited success getting their machines repaired for free by noting the Apple discussion thread).

Raw Data:
Apple Discussion Board
Macintouch User Reports
(more reports in forum thread)
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emac kinda guy
76 months ago
I'm suddenly get a lot of strange dots in my display. Letters missing pixels. Miscellaneous dots on the screen. My kids game was dropping polynominals.

Does this mean that my video card is going? Could it be something else.

I'm running 10.3.9 on a 1.25 GHz G4 e-mac.
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Foxglove9
76 months ago
Usually artifacts tend to come from ram issues on the video card. Have you installed any new programs or done anything different since it started?

One possible solution is the basics. Repairing permissions, repairing disk, resetting PRAM, and resetting firmware. When I was overclocking an older video card I ran into problems like that. Resetting the firmware worked.

Or it could be other things that's causing your problems...
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emac kinda guy
76 months ago
We just installed World of Warcraft and have had many crashes. Have reset permissions and repaired the disk. I'll try the PRAM. Not sure how to reset firmware - but I'll look

Thanks


Usually artifacts tend to come from ram issues on the video card. Have you installed any new programs or done anything different since it started?

One possible solution is the basics. Repairing permissions, repairing disk, resetting PRAM, and resetting firmware. When I was overclocking an older video card I ran into problems like that. Resetting the firmware worked.

Or it could be other things that's causing your problems...

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disconap
76 months ago
WoW may be too much for your machine. But you can try downloading ATIccelerator and seeing if bringing down the RAM or GPU speed gets rid of the artifacts...

http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/15849
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longofest
76 months ago
bad news man!!!

http://macintouch.com/readerreports/emac/topic4116.html#mar02

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=301339&tstart=0%3Cbr

Will be a news story on this issue soon.
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babble
76 months ago
WoW will run fine on your eMac. I've got two of them at home and played my fair share of it.

I had some problem with my screen on one of the eMac, and got the motherboard replaced on AppleCare. Don'T know if it was related to the capacitors or not.
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longofest
76 months ago


It appears as though a significant number of 1.25 Ghz eMac users are suffering from logic board breakdowns that cause video to become distorted. Although Apple's included diagnostic utilities indicate that all hardware is operating normally, opening up the machines reveals bulging and cracked capacitors.

Most of the issues are occurring out of the eMac's 1-year standard warranty, and Apple has yet to set up any sort of extended repair service (although some are having limited success getting their machines repaired for free by noting the Apple discussion thread).

Raw Data:
Apple Discussion Board
Macintouch User Reports
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iriejedi
76 months ago
Probably the same capacitors Dell uses. At our company our Optiplex GX270s and other models were suffering from many blown and buldging capacitors. Dell claimed it was a bad lot and fixed many monther boards in 24 hours, a few on site.

So I guess there is a new QC manager position opening at Capacitor Corp!
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longofest
76 months ago

Probably the same capacitors Dell uses. At our company our Optiplex GX270s and other models were suffering from many blown and buldging capacitors. Dell claimed it was a bad lot and fixed many monther boards in 24 hours, a few on site.

So I guess there is a new QC manager position opening at Capacitor Corp!


Yeah, this kind of thing is to be expected with the lower-end units of any manufacturer. However, to this point Apple isn't (on a large scale) accepting back the eMacs and fixing the logic boards. At least Dell acknowledged the problem. It looks like it is the same problem here (other people aren't having issues as well, so it was a bad lot off the assembly line it looks like).
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nagromme
76 months ago
I won't argue against it being non-insignificant, but Apple has often in the past stepped up to create a program for post-warranty repairs when such an issue emerges. Hopefully they will do the same in this case.

Also "significant numbers" is hard to quantify: if even 1% of owners had a problem, they'd still flood forums seeking solutions. (And still deserve solutions.)
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