Capacity for disruption

It's still dead. My computer. For three or four years it has obeyed many of my commands, and certainly never failed to turn on or off. Yes, it's been frustrating at times. It took me a very long time to discover that to perform a "right click" you have to press CTRL at the same time as clicking on the Mac's mouse. Until yesterday I was often frustrated by its inability to show me, before clicking, where a link might take me (on a PC, of course, you just hover over the link and the address is displayed at the bottom left of the screen). Until yesterday, that is, because today it's irrelevant. The Mac is an ex-Mac. The Apple has rotted.

I've searched discussion forums for clues: apparently Apple used a batch of dodgy capacitors in the power supplies of the G5 iMac. These capacitors leak or explode, quite possibly both, and incapacitate the power supply. No power, no computer.

OK, I thought, I'll dismantle the thing and see if I can find the fault. I could almost hear the breath being sucked past the teeth as I found discussions of fault finding on the G5-with-iSight (my model). The Apple website shows you how to get the back off G5s - great! - but the G5 iSight is excluded. It is non-DIY. Of course, people HAVE managed to get the thing apart, and have put instructions up. But it looks like a nightmare. So much so that the first place I phoned this morning, a highly recommended Apple specialist in Norwich, told me he wasn't interested in taking the job on because of the difficulty in dismantling.

In commenting on my previous post Carl of Maclogics in Peterborough has given me hope. First, by describing a possible easy cure, to do with holding down the "on" button while plugging it in (already tried) and second by telling me not to panic. My data should be recoverable. I suppose in extremis the hard drive could be removed without regard for the rest of the computer, put in an "enclosure", and wired up to another Mac. I've left a message for him to contact me.

Meanwhile there'll be few photos, and none of our recent canal trips.