Hello all,
I picked up a low-cost, unloved G4/400mhz 15" powerbook from Craiglist. I figure it would be nice to mess around with OS X at home some, and use the machine mainly for ssh'ing to all of my unix hosts, and other homely tasks.
The system is intermittent. Normally, upon powerup there is the standard Mac chime, and I can hear the drives kick into action. I held down C, and it doesn't sound like the system is booting from the 10.4 DVD, although I have to admit I haven't tried it while it was working. I did boot 10.3 CD while it was working (And used Disk Utility to find that there was indeed a dvd-rom drive).
Now, before you say backlight... I don't think it is the AC inverter board for driving the CCFL backlight. I can shine a bright light into the display, and not see anything. I don't get anything on an external monitor, and I can shine the light *thru* the apple logo and not see anything.
I've pulled the bottom off, and see what I believe are the display wires + connector and inverter leads. Both have been reseated.
The little latch that catches the cover is broken. It cannot latch to the bottom. The top part is okay. It doesn't look like there are wires leading into the pushbotton on the base. How does the Powerbook know when the lid is shut? One train of thought is that maybe there is a switch to indicate that the lid is closed that is improperly made.
Are there known issues like this, with this model? The seller had issues with the software, and had bought a new notebook so didn't care about this one. Overall it's in pretty good condition and I'd love to get some added life out of it.
The display *will* kick in sometimes. I thought it might be intermittent wires going into the LCD,but I'm not so sure as external VGA would probably work. Another idea was that maybe something has broken loose on the motherboard, but I probed around holding down ICs and other components and wasn't able to come across anything that I could reliably push into causing it to go.
I'd say non-work to work is around 90% non-work to 10% work. It;s rare when it does work.
I pulled the keyboard up, and it doesn't look like the CPU module is socketed. It's under heatsinks and a heat exchanger. Is there anything to be concerned with there?
Thoughts?
Thanks in advance!
Keywords for search: No screen, no LCD, no display, G4/400mhz titanium powerbook no post.
I picked up a low-cost, unloved G4/400mhz 15" powerbook from Craiglist. I figure it would be nice to mess around with OS X at home some, and use the machine mainly for ssh'ing to all of my unix hosts, and other homely tasks.
The system is intermittent. Normally, upon powerup there is the standard Mac chime, and I can hear the drives kick into action. I held down C, and it doesn't sound like the system is booting from the 10.4 DVD, although I have to admit I haven't tried it while it was working. I did boot 10.3 CD while it was working (And used Disk Utility to find that there was indeed a dvd-rom drive).
Now, before you say backlight... I don't think it is the AC inverter board for driving the CCFL backlight. I can shine a bright light into the display, and not see anything. I don't get anything on an external monitor, and I can shine the light *thru* the apple logo and not see anything.
I've pulled the bottom off, and see what I believe are the display wires + connector and inverter leads. Both have been reseated.
The little latch that catches the cover is broken. It cannot latch to the bottom. The top part is okay. It doesn't look like there are wires leading into the pushbotton on the base. How does the Powerbook know when the lid is shut? One train of thought is that maybe there is a switch to indicate that the lid is closed that is improperly made.
Are there known issues like this, with this model? The seller had issues with the software, and had bought a new notebook so didn't care about this one. Overall it's in pretty good condition and I'd love to get some added life out of it.
The display *will* kick in sometimes. I thought it might be intermittent wires going into the LCD,but I'm not so sure as external VGA would probably work. Another idea was that maybe something has broken loose on the motherboard, but I probed around holding down ICs and other components and wasn't able to come across anything that I could reliably push into causing it to go.
I'd say non-work to work is around 90% non-work to 10% work. It;s rare when it does work.
I pulled the keyboard up, and it doesn't look like the CPU module is socketed. It's under heatsinks and a heat exchanger. Is there anything to be concerned with there?
Thoughts?
Thanks in advance!
Keywords for search: No screen, no LCD, no display, G4/400mhz titanium powerbook no post.