dark screen when booting lombard unless power manager is reset

[budlange]

I have a powerbook G3 lombard. Unless I reset the power manager each time I start up the computer, the screen remains dark. I assume it boots with the dark screen, as I hear the gong, although even an external monitor fails to get a video signal when it starts up without first resetting the power manager. As long as I go through the reset procedure prior to starting up the powerbook, everything is fine. Due to this problem I cannot restart the computer. I must shut it down first, then do the reset, and then finally do a cold start.

Thanks for your help

 

[BimBam]

Your Lombard is somewhat 7 years old, and I suspect that the lithium backup battery (PRAM battery) just died on you.
It is very easy to change : remove the keyboard and DVD player and you'll see it on the bottom center of the opening, towards the right.
It is not cheap, though, somewhat 40 dollars.

I must add that I had a somewhat similar problem a year ago and that I had to change the motherboard : my Lombard wouldn't restart without a Power Manager reset, but it then froze minutes after the booting was complete.

BimBam

 

[budlange]

Hi,

Thanks for the prompt reply.

I thought of that. Also, a few times, the date and time had gone back to the default settings, indicating that the battery was no good. So about two weeks ago I replaced the battery. Seemed to solve the date/time problem, but didn't solve the dark screen problem.

 

[carpethanger]

If the screen is dark when you boot up, if you shine a flashlight on it (or thru the white apple on the back) you will likely see the desktop is indeed there, but you can't see it as the backlight hasn't turned itself on.

Try using the screen brightness adjust keys (two keys with the "sun" icon on them on the upper left of the keyboard) and using the right hand key (with the large "sun" icon on it) cycle the brightness all the way up, then using the left hand key (with the small "sun" on it), cycle brightness all the way back down, then hit the right hand key (large "sun") again to cycle brightness back up.

You should find that the screen will then come back to life (light up). Works on my Lombard at least, as it was always starting up dark no matter what, so finally discovered this trick works.

- One other way would be while shining a flashlight on the screen, to try to find, see, and follow the mouse cursor up to the apple menu, then select "Sleep" from the menu, then when the Lombard instantly goes to sleep, just hit the "Return" key to wake it back up and the screen will light up. Biggest challenge with this tip is in trying to find, see, and follow the cursor while shining a flashlight on the screen.

 

[budlange]

Thanks for the reply, CARPETHANGER.

Here's how the issue was fixed. I have a friend who is a mac laptop specialist (lives 2500 miles away, unfortunately) who suggested that it might be the L2 cache on the processor card of the Lombard. And, indeed, it was. Easy to check:

Look at the Hardware Review under System Profiler. Included on the list, just below the CPU Speed, ought to be "L2 Cache 1 MB" or something similar, if the L2 cache is good. In this case, no info concerning the L2 cache was shown. There is no way to fix the processor card. I replaced the card with a good one having L2 cache. Problem solved.