My iMac (G5 2.0GHz, 20”) refuses to stay powered. Since early this afternoon, it has been suddenly shutting off, as though its plug has been yanked from the wall.
The first time it happened I thought the power had gone out. All the symptoms were a match (no warning, no fan noise, no trigger—just poof! and then nothing), but the lights were still on, so a power outage it was not. Puzzled, I turned the machine back on, checked out the crash logs, found nothing out of the ordinary, and continued working away, waiting to see if it would happen again. Sure enough, a few minutes later, it happened, and again I was left staring at a hopelessly useless black screen.
Frustrated, I turned my attention to, and subsequently ruled out, the power cord, the power bar, and the wall outlet. I tried it in another room, in a different outlet, on a different breaker. Each time I thought the problem had vanished, my hopes were dashed by a sudden, inexplicable, shutdown.
During brief stints of uptime, I was able to run a few diagnostics, check a few log files, and try a few tricks, all to no avail. Everything seemed fine. I even opened it up and looked under the hood, as if it were a car, as if I would be able to see something suspicious, or out of line. Not surprisingly, it provided no answers.
After much hair-pulling I gave up. It only stays running for a few minutes at most, and as such is unusable. I have since concluded that the power supply must be faulty and have resolved to box it up and cart it down to my local mac dealer first thing in the morning to have it fixed.
Luckily, it’s still under warranty; luckier still, I have a spare laptop.
This laptop on which I am now typing (a Toshiba M30) has really been around the block. I mean, in recent weeks it’s seen FreeBSD, PCBSD, DesktopBSD, Ubuntu-hoary, and Ubuntu-breezy. We’re talking full installs here—no stinking live-cds. I use it as a testing ground for new operating systems, my only criteria for a successful install being the achievement of a wireless Internet connection with zero configuration.
As chance would have it, I had installed kubuntu-5.10 (ubuntu with KDE) on the weekend—to try it out. It passed the zero-config test, but I had no intention of using it as my primary OS. Only days later, here I am, learning the ins and outs of Debian/Linux. It’s not OS X, (or even FreeBSD), but really, it’s not so bad.
I probably spent more time lamenting the plight of the iMac than I did getting set up on kubuntu. Within a few hours, I had my packages, preferences, software, mail, and the entire Rails stack set up. Now I’m back hacking on typo, working on the next version of Scribbish (which I will post about later).
I’m sure I’ll miss a few of OS X’s comforts, but until the iMac gets fixed, I think I can make myself at home here. I’ve missed working on a laptop.
UPDATE: I quickly grew tired of KDE. To be fair, it’s really powerful in terms of its capabilities and applets (there’s a k-prefixed app for just about everything), but I found it to be, well, Kluttered, Komplex, and Konfusing. I am now using Gnome which is a much better fit for me.