[cpac]

So it's taken me a while to nail this down, but I now have a 100% reproducable problem:

TiBook 500/512/20Gig/10.3.7 and all the updates, no haxies, etc. Password protection on wake/screen saver is turned on

To recreate my problem:

(1)Turn PB on
(2)plug in USB cable (for camera or blackberry, or even just keyboard & mouse)
(3)put machine to sleep

Upon wake, the screen remains black (though the HD spins up, the sleep indicator light goes out, etc.). Attempting to sleep/wake again is seldom successful and when it is successful results in the same black screen.

I get the same result as above when I remove the USB cable before sleep and also when I remove it after sleep.

This makes it so that I have to hard-restart by holding down the power button in order to get the screen to come back on.

Anybody know what's going on? Or have suggestions of possible fixes. This is really messing with my uptime and occassionally I lose those unsaved changes...

[iREZ]

It's acting as if there was an external monitor hooked in, ie. clamshell mode for Alu PB owners, where you put the computer to sleep by closing it then attaching an external monitor and external mouse or keyboard and starting it back up again keeps the screen on the PB black but the external starts working instead dedicating all the VRAM to it. I'd try the norm resetting PRAM and PMU and maybe repairing permissions. If none of those fixes the issue, you should take it to a dealer to see what's going on. There was a USB sleep problem in 10.3.4 or .5 but your running .7 so I doubt that's the problem.

[Rainy Day]

Originally posted by cpac:
Upon wake, the screen remains black (though the HD spins up, the sleep indicator light goes out, etc.). Attempting to sleep/wake again is seldom successful and when it is successful results in the same black screen.

This is what is commonly referred to as "coma sleep." Depending on the Book and OS version� and occasionally the phase of the moon � the problem occurs either as the book goes to sleep, or when it wakes up. Either way, the only solution is to reboot.

Others have suggested the problem is related to USB. Strictly speaking, i think it is related to power draw, whether from USB devices or elsewhere. (I.e. any power draw beyond a certain, probably book-centric, power threshold.)

On my PowerBook (a Wallstreet) i have learned that if i make a practice of ejecting all CardBus cards (which draw a fair amount of power) before the book goes to sleep, then i don't see the problem. Since i get USB via CardBus, this also disconnects all my USB devices.

In your case, if you make a habit of unplugging all USB (and probably any unpowered FireWire) devices before sleeping the book, you'll probably be okay. (I don't know if a powered USB hub would help or not?)

The only exceptions to the aforestated rule that i have seen are: 1) once my PRAM settings were hosed because my PRAM battery had discharged. Then i was getting coma sleep even with all cards ejected. After recharging the PRAM battery, reseting the power manager, and resetting the System Preferences power management options, the problem went away. 2) OS 9 doesn't seem to share the power issue, but you may see coma sleep if the Finder is in the background when the book goes to sleep. This is not a factor under MacOS X, which seems to be strictly power draw related.

Hope this helps.

Edit: For what it's worth, Panther (10.3.9) has completely solved the coma-sleep problem on my Wallstreet (even with the USB CardBus card powered up and in use). Ironic that Panther doesn't officially support the Wallstreet, but is the fastest, most stable version of MacOS X for it! Thanks to XPostFacto for bringing Panther to the Wallstreet!