pvera
Registered
Greetings,
I already found earlier threads on powerbook G4s that refused to display on boot. In most of the cases a combination of zapping the pram and/or hitting the power reset button did the trick. The unlucky ones found themselves replacing the motherboard.
My case is a little bit different. The specific model is the Titanium G4 867 with DVI. Mine won't chime regardless of how many times I try to reset it, or if I take out the power cord and battery, etc. It simply powers up, no chime and no screen. So I left the damn thing alone, and a day or two later I look at it and IT IS RUNNING FINE.
So I thought oh well, anomaly. Ran a software update, rebooted. Dead again. Spent another frantic hour researching this, but ended up with the same result: a brick. I could not even boot it as a target drive. I could not even boot it off the hardware test CD. Nothing.
So I left the damn thing alone, and a day or two later I took a lot at it. Yes, once again it was running fine.
This time I ran repair permissions twice, and everything was great. Couldn't find any weird errors in the console. Airport worked fine, got online, screwed around with it, it ran perfectly. My curiosity got the best of me, so I tried to reboot it so I could run the hardware test CD. A brick. And that's where it is at right now.
The only weird thing I see in all this is that F5 and F6 are reversed. When the machine manages to boot up, F6 acts as the num lock, which is the default behavior. When it is hosed, F5 lights up num lock and F6 doesn't work.
I can't test it with external video because I can't find my s/video adapter and I don't have any CRTs in the house that I can use with the DVI->VGA adaptor. The laptop had AppleCare, but it expired about three months ago.
Has anyone seen this kind of thing? I would hate to spend more to fix it than what it is worth right now, and I don't feel like buying a new laptop.
Thanks,
Pedro
I already found earlier threads on powerbook G4s that refused to display on boot. In most of the cases a combination of zapping the pram and/or hitting the power reset button did the trick. The unlucky ones found themselves replacing the motherboard.
My case is a little bit different. The specific model is the Titanium G4 867 with DVI. Mine won't chime regardless of how many times I try to reset it, or if I take out the power cord and battery, etc. It simply powers up, no chime and no screen. So I left the damn thing alone, and a day or two later I look at it and IT IS RUNNING FINE.
So I thought oh well, anomaly. Ran a software update, rebooted. Dead again. Spent another frantic hour researching this, but ended up with the same result: a brick. I could not even boot it as a target drive. I could not even boot it off the hardware test CD. Nothing.
So I left the damn thing alone, and a day or two later I took a lot at it. Yes, once again it was running fine.
This time I ran repair permissions twice, and everything was great. Couldn't find any weird errors in the console. Airport worked fine, got online, screwed around with it, it ran perfectly. My curiosity got the best of me, so I tried to reboot it so I could run the hardware test CD. A brick. And that's where it is at right now.
The only weird thing I see in all this is that F5 and F6 are reversed. When the machine manages to boot up, F6 acts as the num lock, which is the default behavior. When it is hosed, F5 lights up num lock and F6 doesn't work.
I can't test it with external video because I can't find my s/video adapter and I don't have any CRTs in the house that I can use with the DVI->VGA adaptor. The laptop had AppleCare, but it expired about three months ago.
Has anyone seen this kind of thing? I would hate to spend more to fix it than what it is worth right now, and I don't feel like buying a new laptop.
Thanks,
Pedro
