Hello All. I have a Powerbook G4 17" 1.67 GHz, with 2GB of memory recently installed. A few days ago, my machine crashed... HARD. All I get on power up is a power light and some optical drive activity. No "bong", no display, and in the event that it does mysteriously get all the way to the OS, I get no trackpad or keyboard response. Hell, this thing even booted to a white screen once. Why? I don't know.
The story:
Purchased in December of 04' at CompUSA, I bought this machine and on the spot upgraded the memory to 1GB in the store by adding a single PNY/Centon 512MB SODIMM. Never had a problem at all. About a month ago, I went back to the same store, and purchased 2 1GB SODIMMs, and the machine has been running fine.... until a few days ago. I have sent this machine to Apple's repair center via CompUSA, after their techs looked it over. While I was standing there, watching these guys do the same things I had tried over the phone with Apple support, one of the little dudes said "Oh yea, that centon memory's never been worth a crap, and it's got a habit of crashing those computers." My reply: "hey, YOU installed a Centon 512MB chip in it a year ago. You didn't have a problem with it then, especially when the package said "made for Mac Powerbooks"".
The phone tech and myself tried PMU resets, PRAM resets, trackpad force eject, Open-Firmware boots, etc. No luck. Roasted logic board? We (Apple, CompUSA, and myself) suspect so. Here's the real sh*t-kicker:
http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/badram/topic2122.html
Base on this article, am I to believe that Apple is going to blame my computer failure on a "memory incompatibility" issue? When one year ago, the Apple authorized reseller installed the same brand of memory and gave me a full warranty?
Someone tell me how a "bad memory chip" that's been working fine for three weeks could instantly cause a massive system failure? The last curveball I threw them was when I said "yea, I went back to the old SODIMMs and there was no resolution." I'm betting that I'm gonna be told I should go to Apple and spend $300 on 1 gig of memory so I can keep the extended warranty that I paid $350 for. I feel a battle coming on.
The story:
Purchased in December of 04' at CompUSA, I bought this machine and on the spot upgraded the memory to 1GB in the store by adding a single PNY/Centon 512MB SODIMM. Never had a problem at all. About a month ago, I went back to the same store, and purchased 2 1GB SODIMMs, and the machine has been running fine.... until a few days ago. I have sent this machine to Apple's repair center via CompUSA, after their techs looked it over. While I was standing there, watching these guys do the same things I had tried over the phone with Apple support, one of the little dudes said "Oh yea, that centon memory's never been worth a crap, and it's got a habit of crashing those computers." My reply: "hey, YOU installed a Centon 512MB chip in it a year ago. You didn't have a problem with it then, especially when the package said "made for Mac Powerbooks"".
The phone tech and myself tried PMU resets, PRAM resets, trackpad force eject, Open-Firmware boots, etc. No luck. Roasted logic board? We (Apple, CompUSA, and myself) suspect so. Here's the real sh*t-kicker:
http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/badram/topic2122.html
Base on this article, am I to believe that Apple is going to blame my computer failure on a "memory incompatibility" issue? When one year ago, the Apple authorized reseller installed the same brand of memory and gave me a full warranty?
Someone tell me how a "bad memory chip" that's been working fine for three weeks could instantly cause a massive system failure? The last curveball I threw them was when I said "yea, I went back to the old SODIMMs and there was no resolution." I'm betting that I'm gonna be told I should go to Apple and spend $300 on 1 gig of memory so I can keep the extended warranty that I paid $350 for. I feel a battle coming on.