Mac OS 10.2.6 and Wallstreet backlight

C

cloudkay

Registered
I recently bought a G3 powerbook wallstreet off of ebay. Unfortantaly it didn't come with any OS. I bought Mac OS X.

At first I thought something was wrong with the unit. I would boot off the CD and see the grey screen with the apple and then the screen would go black. I tried reseting it. Then I searched online and found that there's an issue with X and the wallstreet backlight. Funny enough I installed X by lighting the screen with a flashlight.

Now after the powerbook boots and auto-logins I can press the brightness-up button and the backlight turns on. But, If I put the unit to sleep the backlight will not come on after waking up.

I read that a solution is to boot into OS 9.1 and put the system to sleep and then wake it up and reboot into X. Unfortantly I don't have any other version of Mac OS other than X.

Has anyone been able to solve this annoyance without OS 9?

Thanks
 
Hmm, I've got the 13.3" version, and no problems with Mac OS X (10.1). I should let you know, however, that I never use OS X on this particular machine. It's pretty much a dedicated PowerPoint OS 9 laptop for church.

On a seperate note, I continue to be impressed by Apple hardware. My battery was like less than 1% full when I started the PB up; halfway through the startup process, it forced itself to take a rest (sleep mode, of course.) Well, I plugged it in and it continued to boot up. Pretty sweet!
 
I did have that problem with my PowerBook G3 back last September. The fix wasn't one I would recommend for most people and I don't think I could even write it out completely now if I wanted to.

Strangely, my problems started with the 10.2.1 update. The fix required transplanting a part of a 10.2 install back into 10.2.1. I'll see if I save my notes. For some reason I seem to recall I replace the PreferencesMonitor from 10.2.1 with one from 10.2.

At any rate, after the fix my PowerBook has been running great. I was able to upgrade it from a G3/266 to a G4/500 and it has 512 MB of RAM. It has become my primary system for doing almost everything now.
 
I must say, even with this annoyance, I Love this machine. It's my first Mac, I've had it for 6 days and I don't think I'll ever go back to the x86 world. And, even with having to press the brightness-up control on boot up, the powerbook has a smoother and faster bootup then any of my PCs have had. I just have to remember not to close the lid while the machine is on :) Speaking of which does anyone know of a way to prevent the machine from going to sleep when the lid is closed?
 
Welcome, always nice to hear a switch story!
I don't think it is possible to change a setting so that the computer doesn't sleep when you close the lid, I have had some success with putting a magnate over the sleep sensor in my iBook. (It uses magnetism to check if the lid is closed. If there is a magnate in the way, then obviously it doesn't work :))

My recommendation for fixing the problem would be to go out and buy a copy of OS 9. I never use it (or classic for that matter) on my iBook, but quite frankly, with a machine as old as yours, OS X will sometimes be dog slow, so using OS 9 will be a lot faster if you ever want to use anything processor intensive :)
 
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