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tubhost · Aug 30, 2004, 01:53 AM

I have a PowerBook Pismo 400 which doesn't seem to get even the slightest bit of power to it via the power adapter. Please help me if you can.

To make a long story short, I'll give you an abridged history of what I did to cause my issues: There was a loose connection for the headphone jack in the back which I was using into amplified speakers for better sound. I tried opening the machine up and fixing the connection, but had trouble getting far enough into it to reach that loose piece. During the fiddling I believe I popped the CPU board out of the socket where the memory was on both sides. I'm assuming that killed the power to the memory losing the ROM BIOS, because after I got it all put back together again all I could get out of it was a hard drive spin and a long system speaker beep.

To complicate things a bit, I left it sitting for several months and didn't attend to the issue. Now when I hook up the AC adapter and hit the power button I get no response whatsoever. The green light doesn't show any activity at all. If anyone out there can shed light on any and/or all of these issues, please respond. I sincerely appreciate all of your help.

[APi]TheMan · Aug 30, 2004, 09:22 AM

Originally posted by tubhost:
I have a PowerBook Pismo 400 which doesn't seem to get even the slightest bit of power to it via the power adapter. Please help me if you can.

To make a long story short, I'll give you an abridged history of what I did to cause my issues: There was a loose connection for the headphone jack in the back which I was using into amplified speakers for better sound. I tried opening the machine up and fixing the connection, but had trouble getting far enough into it to reach that loose piece. During the fiddling I believe I popped the CPU board out of the socket where the memory was on both sides. I'm assuming that killed the power to the memory losing the ROM BIOS, because after I got it all put back together again all I could get out of it was a hard drive spin and a long system speaker beep.

To complicate things a bit, I left it sitting for several months and didn't attend to the issue. Now when I hook up the AC adapter and hit the power button I get no response whatsoever. The green light doesn't show any activity at all. If anyone out there can shed light on any and/or all of these issues, please respond. I sincerely appreciate all of your help.

Are you sure that you seated the CPU card firmly (the card that has the funky heatpipe leading off the card and the two RAM slots)? Try pulling it back off and looking to make sure that none of the pins in the socket are bent, there are lots of them in there and you can straighten them back out and have things work if you do it correctly.

tubhost · Aug 30, 2004, 06:58 PM

All the pins look really damn straight. I pushed pretty hard and that CPU board just isn't going in any further.

Maybe it's time for me to finally run down to the Apple store and have it looked at.

SEkker · Aug 30, 2004, 10:25 PM

On the Lombard, the power adapter and the sound input port are on the same daughter board. If it's loose, it may not be working.

I'd just open the whole machine up and reset the connections, sounds like something is just not seated properly.

[APi]TheMan · Aug 31, 2004, 03:09 PM

Originally posted by SEkker:
On the Lombard, the power adapter and the sound input port are on the same daughter board. If it's loose, it may not be working.

I'd just open the whole machine up and reset the connections, sounds like something is just not seated properly.

The same is true on the Pismo, I've had many experiences replacing parts on Powerbook G3s where I repair Macs for faculty at our University.

I just actually sent one in to Apple a few days ago. The price it would have cost the user/department for us to buy the part AND to charge labor would have been more than it was to send it in to Apple. I believe the price was $230 or so to send back to Apple, but for that price they will fix ANY part they find to be malfunctioning.

So there's no flashing system folder icon? Try starting the system with the hard drive unplugged and booting from a CD. Do you have any other RAM modules that you could swap with the others? What about when you turn the computer on, is there ANY video? If not, can you press the caps lock key on the keyboard to make sure that there is power to the unit?

You said there was one long beep at startup? The "Power-on Self Test" is an automatic test that runs at boot, and it will test various aspects of the system and give a certain number of beeps depending on what is wrong:

1 beep No RAM is installed or detected.
2 beeps EDO memory is installed. The PowerBook (FireWire) ships with
SDRAM SO-DIMMs and does not accept EDO memory.
3 beeps No RAM banks passed memory testing.
4 or 5 beeps Bad checksum for the remainder of the boot ROM. The ROM (which is located on the microprocessor module) is bad.

tubhost · Sep 5, 2004, 02:50 AM

The CAPS LOCK key doesn't light up at all. Neither does the green light near the base of the LCD. There's no hard drive spin or fans running either, after depressing the power button.

UPDATE: I sent my PowerBook off to Apple Care because the Genius Bar in downtown SF didn't know what was wrong with it. They sent it out for out-of-warranty repair service, which they claimed would pay for "anything" that was bad until it was fully repaired. I get it back 3 days later saying that the battery is dead and they wouldn't replace it because it's not covered by the warranty. Does this make any sense? The person at the Genius Bar even tried a different battery and AC adapter and had no luck getting it to start. I'm a little frustrated by this. I guess I'm going back out there again tomorrow and will try and re-try this process again.

anamexis · Sep 5, 2004, 10:45 PM

This sounds like the exact problem I had.
The CPU card was not seated at all. The computer would respond to absolutely nothing. Push down on the CPU card until you hear a satisfying click--it takes more pressure than you think.

tubhost · Sep 6, 2004, 01:38 PM

I took the Pismo back to the Apple Store and he hooked up his AC Adapter and it worked. I looked at my adapter and there was visibly a break in the wiring inside.

So, the answer appears to have been a bad CPU board. I guess it mostly struck me as strange that it used to beep and then stopped doing anything at all.

Also, I was able to mend the power adapter by cutting it open and splicing the cables together. The battery also appears to be charging fine. End of story.

tigas · Sep 6, 2004, 07:15 PM

Originally posted by tubhost:
I took the Pismo back to the Apple Store and he hooked up his AC Adapter and it worked. I looked at my adapter and there was visibly a break in the wiring inside.

So, the answer appears to have been a bad CPU board. I guess it mostly struck me as strange that it used to beep and then stopped doing anything at all.

Also, I was able to mend the power adapter by cutting it open and splicing the cables together. The battery also appears to be charging fine. End of story.

Congratulations: You must be a surgeon, to be able to open the yoyo adapter's cable and re-splicing it. I tried it, and it worked for 2 months, then it died for good and almost took out my Pismo with it.

tubhost · Sep 6, 2004, 07:24 PM

It's mostly just a few things. There is a positive and a negative. I determined that the negative was the inner white wire and the positive was the wiring wrapped around the outside of the white wire. I simply had to separate the two of them, splice them, wrap them each in electrical tape, then wrap them both up with more electrical tape. We'll see if my PowerBook likes it and for how long. 8)

Bomeyer · Sep 7, 2004, 06:12 PM

My AC adaptor yo-yo wore out at the connector. It's a poor design. I rewired, soldered, and taped it and it lasted a good while, but finally lost connection. I bought a new adaptor (non yo-yo) and it charges great.

tigas · Sep 7, 2004, 08:35 PM

Originally posted by tubhost:
It's mostly just a few things. There is a positive and a negative. I determined that the negative was the inner white wire and the positive was the wiring wrapped around the outside of the white wire. I simply had to separate the two of them, splice them, wrap them each in electrical tape, then wrap them both up with more electrical tape. We'll see if my PowerBook likes it and for how long. 8)

Well, mine had broken just going into the plug that goes into the Pismo, so I had to carve away the plastic (silicon?) that seals the plug. I'm using a Madsonline adapter; they're quite good, and you can get an adapter from the old-style plug to the (lighted, thinner) new plug, so that new adapter will also work with newer Powerbooks.

PacHead · Sep 7, 2004, 11:50 PM

Originally posted by tigas:
Well, mine had broken just going into the plug that goes into the Pismo, so I had to carve away the plastic (silicon?) that seals the plug.

This whole thread is like deja vu. I just had to do this exact same thing a couple of months ago. I've had my pismo since 2001 and the power adapter became faulty just recently, so I had to carve away the plastic also (which was a pain in the ass), and spliced some wires together, and now it works again, and both the batteries charges.

I'm going to buy a new adapter soon, but I haven't been moving my powerbook around too much, so it works fine for now.