eMac and power button woes

[Marc van Gemert]

Hi listas,
bear with me,
Got home from work Wednesday eve around 10 p.m., jumped on the couch to 
watch some soccer (Ajax was playing). Phone rang.
Friend of mine with an eMac said that it only booted into a text-based 
screen (he was talking 'bout Open Firmware off course). And together 
with the boot you could hear one high-piched tone. He also said that 
suddenly the eMac would boot out of itself and sometimes it would 
shutdown a few secs after it booted, sometimes the fifth time trying it 
would boot (I noticed the same later on).

I had him try some things like:
reset-nvram,
zap pram,
boot from Hardware test CD (eject key on k/b didn't work so I had him 
open the front and press the CD key on the drive),
nothing worked, still booted into Open Firmware.

So I drove down there.

Disconnected all peripherals.
I noticed that the eMac wouldn't turn on if I pressed the power button 
the first time, I had to 'fiddle' a little to get it to 'spark'.

According to the kbase "1 beep = no RAM installed"
so I yanked one module at a time to test, same problem,
even tried another rather new battery from a tray-loader iMac, same problem.
I even tried to boot from the CD via Open Firmware, but couldn't find 
the right string.
Did a CUDA reset, nogo.

As a last resort I unscrewed the case (had done this before as I 
installed a Lite-On CDRW-DVD combo a few weeks ago).

I disconnected the tiny little power cord and reconnected it to the 
power button, closed case and it booted fine.... No more Open Firmware...

He still has to fiddle with the power button, but it works fine now. I 
guess that that button got stuck and that's why it booted or shutdown 
out of itself.

Now my question, can I let it fixed under AppleCare? I bought this eMac 
a few weeks ago and got two years AppelCare with it. Probably have to 
put the CD-ROM back, I don't think they like it that I installed that 
combo myself, right?

Has anyone of you with an eMac noticed the same problem or heard of it 
before?

Thanks,
Marc



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