Hey all. I recently (Well, start of the year, not so recent) had a problem with my PowerBook G4 15" Titanium 500, when I sent it to sleep one time, opened it, and it didn't come back. The fan started, it made the click noises, but it didn't complete the wakeup. I was stuck, with a black screen, and no response. So I cut the power (held the power button 'till it turned off) and then tried turning it on again. Nothing. Keyboard LED's worked when I pressed them. Tried turning it off again, then on again. Nothing. Went back to my desktop PC.
A few months later, I tried again. I spent hours, turning it off, and on, and off, and on again, pressing strange button combinations, turning it on, closing the lid, opening it, turning it off, turning it on with the lid closed (I tried) and nothing. Out of frustration, I started mindlessly tapping the powerbutton rapidly. All of a sudden, I heard the fan start spinning, followed by the Chime, then followed by the apple logo appearing on the screen. My whole body jumped and I nearly choked on my own stomach when this happened, my Mac hadn't worked for months, and here it was, all of a sudden, deciding to turn itself on. After about an hour of carefully exploring all my files, and getting back the feel of my mac, I decided to try sending it to sleep, to see if it works. Once again, it didn't wake up from it's slumber. I spent another few minutes trying desperately to figure out what it was I did to start it up, and after pressing the power button in a specific sequence of 3 quick taps, pause, then 2 more taps, it turned on once again, but this time not chiming. I was greeted with a blank screen, and a spinning fan.
So, did the process again, got it working, apple logo, saw desktop, everything. Didn't dare try sleepmode, or try unplugging it from power source. I love my mac, and I finally had it working, was fearful of anything that might kill it again.
Sent it over to the apple centre the next day. They said "Ok, we have a slight backlog of repairs, so it might take about a week to do a diagnostic on it. Most we will take is 2 weeks, and we will know what your problem is. Just call us every so often." So, a week later, call up "No sorry, it's still in the que. Try again next week"
That was reasonable, I thought.
Next week, "Sorry, still in the que. We'll call you when it's ready."
Hmm, maybe they'll be a few more days...
Week 3: "Still in the que."
Ok, wtf...
Week 4: "We'll call you when it's ready"
Oh no, they've been taken over by the Gates army! Those poor souls....
Week 5: "Yes, you have a faulty Logic Board. We'll have to replace it. It'll cost $850 (AU)"
Rest in peace my lovely Mac...*sniff*
$850 that I don't have. Great.
A while later (Months) I went and got it back from Apple, and took it home (Few days ago). I plugged it in, sat there for 15 minutes trying sequences again, got it to turn on. After about 4 hours of use, I tried sleep mode again. Opened it back up, low and behold, IT WOKE UP!
Wow, I thought, if that works, maybe I can turn it on normally. So, I shut it down, and pressed the power button once, and all of a sudden, it turns on. NORMALLY!
"Whats going on" I thought. Was my powerbook actually working properly?
That night, I put it to sleep. I woke up in the morning, hoping to take it to college with me. I open the lid, and whaddya know. Blank screen. But something occured to me...this thing's stone cold. It usually doesn't actually start properly untill you can feel heat coming from it.
No time for experimenting now, out the door I go, with my PC laptop. Come home, and tried starting my Mac again. Once again, doesn't work the first time. I was about to start the sequences all over again, when I remembered the thought I had that morning. The PowerBook was stone cold yet again. So, I went and grabbed my Sunbeam heater fan (Instant heat blast! I love em!) and pointed it at the underside of the Powerbook, and kept it a safe distance. Didn't wanna melt the thing.
So, I pressed the power button after about 5 seconds, and it starts up!
Could it be that my Powerbook just needs to be warm to start up? Might the Logic Board never need replacing to function? Anyone else with the same problem?
BTW, I'm typing this up on my PowerBook. I'm going to try my theory again soon, see if it works. Sorry if this is too long for a description, but I saw that many people don't give enough information initially, so to limit frustration, I wrote everything up.
To recap, this is a 15 inch Titanium PowerBook G4 500 with Mac OS X 10.3.9 and 1 GB of SDRAM
Any information on how to go about fixing this without having to replace the logic board would be great ^_^
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