iBook G4 power problem

Z

zeroatma

Registered
Recently I posted about my problem with my DC-in board. I have ordered a new one and plan to replace it as soon as it arrives.

However, a new problem has popped up, and I'm not sure if it's related:
At work/school (grad student) I put my computer to sleep today, with the battery fully charged and the computer running on AC adapter (the DC board is flaking but not dead yet), by closing the lid. I came home, opened up the iBook, and nothing happened. No sleep light, the monitor didn't come on, no noise to indicate it had powered back on. I didn't notice if the sleep light was on beforehand.

I checked the battery, it's near-full still. So I pulled out the battery, put it back in, and booted up. I got into OS X, then a minute less, it seemed like everything shut down. It sounded like the computer was off, no fan, harddrive noises (few as there are). I tried to reset the PMU after removing/replacing the battery, then booted. I got the apple, then it shut down again.

Now, I can't get it running at all.

Is this a DC-board issue, or something more sisnister? I don't want to have to buy a new computer, I can't really afford it (especially since I want to get AppleCare after all this). Should replacing my DC-in board fix my computer?
 
You might try pulling out any extra RAM you have and see if the behavior changes. You might also try booting into Open Firmware and doing the resets there:

TO BOOT INTO OPEN FIRMWARE:
Shut down the computer if it's on.
Boot up with the OPTION + COMMAND (Apple) + O + F keys held down
(that's the letter O not zero)
You should get a white screen with black text.
Type "reset-nvram" (without the quotes) and press return
Type "set-defaults" (without the quotes) and press return
Type "reset-all" (without the quotes) and press return.

The computer should reboot normally. This is a "deeper-level" method for resetting the PRAM (and maybe the PMU ???)
 
Thanks, I thought it might be my logic board/GPU issue, as seen in www.coreyarnold.org/ibook

But I tried the fix he suggested to no avail, and I can see that the GPU is soldered on just fine. So I tried your suggestion, pulling out the RAM, and it worked fine!

Fantastic!

Oddly, I put the memory back in, and my computer still seems to be working. Hopefully it will stay that way, but if not, I'll pull the RAM again and if that helps, I can just buy new RAM.

Still waiting on my DC-in board, but I'm posting this from my iBook, so once the part arrives I'll hopefully be good as new.
 
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