G4 froze up, won't startup & makes awful sound 1

[bq]

My G4 500mz dual cpu froze up today. When I pushed the restart button it played 1/2 the boot chime,the hard drive starts spinning and it makes a horrible static sound with a rhythmic bom,bom,bom,bom sound. Holding down the power button turns it off. Pressing the power again starts same process all over. Nothing appears on the screen. No changes have been made to the hardware. I tried changing out the hard drive to NO avail. Ya sounds it like a board problem, but how do I proceed.

Thanks for your help!
BQ

 

[Ecaboodle]

Unplug the power to HDD and see if you get the same noise when you turn it on! If you do sounds like it may have had it! If it still sounds as bad then it must be something else. Have you got a CD or DVD in the drive?

If you can't fix it in 20 minutes call someone who can.

 

[bq]

Thanks for your input! Yes, it still makes the sound after unpluging the HDD. Off to the repair shop we go!
_BQ

 

[bq]

F Y I: As it turned out It was a recently installed 512 mz ram chip that had gone bad! BQ

 

[Ecaboodle]

Have not come across ram making funny noise like that, but then sheep can make funny sounds. ; )

Thanks for the info!!

If you can't fix it in 20 minutes call someone who can.

 

[ITY]

Just to confirm the above. YES this half-chime phenomenon does occur with bad RAM. Happened to my G4 (gigether) and to a clients G4 (PCI).