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Are you sure the iMac is really shutting down or just turning off the backlight? The tell-tale sing would be to let the unit fully boot-up (wait 3 minutes) and the press the button the apple keyboard that ejects the CD-ROM. If the CD-ROM door opens, you iMac is running with disabled or broken backlight.
The inverter circuit on the iMac G4 is known to be weak.
There could be another problem, though. The iMac G4 is also known to have weak internal power supplies. Here's how you can tell:
Hold down the CMD OPT "O" and "F" keys at the same time while pressing the power button. This will tell the iMac that you want to boot into the Open Firmware shell, bypassing the Mac OS X startup. If this works, your power supply is good, the inverter is good and you have a problem with your Open Firmware boot string. To fix the boot string, Power on the unit while holding down the keys CMD-OPT-P-R to zap the parameter RAM (PRAM) and reset everything to defaults.
If you were not able to boot into the Open Firmware shell, your problem is either a failed power supply or a failed screen backlight.
The last possible culprit is your iMac could suffer from "Bulging Capacitor Syndrome", where a batch of iMac G4s, iMac G5s another electronics were fitted with a bad batch of capacitors. Eventually, the caps will rupture and cause irreparable damage to the logic board. Only way to verify this is to pull the unit apart and visually inspect. If you see little green or blue cylinders that seem to be bulging or oozing a thick oily goo, that's your problem. Only recourse is to shop around on eBay and look for a replacement logic board.
It can not find the hard drive or the startup folder on the hard drive. Try and fix that by putting in the original boot cd/dvd and repair and choose your hard drive start up folde as boot device. If you can not your hard drive may have died.
It sounds like the system is corrupted. What I would do is to get your
instal disk and boot up holding down the c key on your keyboard. Once you
have booted up go to the file menu and run disk utility to verify and
repair the hard drive. Then go to the instal menu and instal a fresh
system remembering to preserve the users data so you do not wipe
anything. Hopefully this will work.
If you can find an older SVGA monitor, try hooking it up to the port on the back of your mac. If you get video then chances are the LCD display is shot.
Try turning it on with the shift key down. This gives a safe boot. If it's going to turn on at all, it will turn on then. Also, boot it with Disc Warrior or Tech Tools and run some tests to see what is going on. I hope you find all is well, and that the repairs are just minor. Good luck.
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