[raynman]

I've been in and out of several G3 ibooks in the past few months, but I have never been so close to, yet so far from getting one running as this time. You can tell I do this for fun, because I'd have lost my shorts on this one if I did these repairs for a living! TOOO much time invested! (but I have much more time than money.......)

I have a 12" G3 800mhz with 640 ram and combo drive with newly installed Tiger OS (airport card removed while I'm trying to sort this thing out) that had exhibited the classic iBook graphics problems. I reflowed this one using a similar technique to what I had used on a previous ibook with success after a couple of tries.

see link:
http://forums.macnn.com/66/macbook-a...b-logic-board/

But now I can't get this one to boot up beyond the blue screen which appears just after the grey screen with the spinning circle under the apple.

I would just give up, but I can get it SOOOOO close to working, that I thought I'd ask here to see if anyone could offer some advice.

Immediately after the 'repair' I ran the hardware check CD that I got with this ibook, and it passed all tests in short and long versions, so I thought I had another success on my hands, BUT... I could not get Tiger to install beyond the reboot after the first CD. It would hang as described above, so I mounted this ibook as a target disk, and used a sister ibook to install tiger to this one over firewire, and it all went well, and the sister booted up FINE on this ibook's install of tiger via firewire disk. This ibook, however, will NOT boot beyond the point noted above when attempting to boot normally.

....now for the interesting stuff.

1) this ibook DOES boot in safe mode (holding the shift key while booting)! and seems to run fine, goes to sleep, wakes up, etc. But if I shut off or restart and attempt to boot normally, no boot; same symptoms as above

2) the system install seems OK, as I AM able to set this ibook as a Firewire disk, and boot it, without problems, on a sister ibook.

3) this ibook, however, will NOT, boot it's sister ibook's system through firewire disk mode (hangs at the same place)

4) in verbose mode (command-v on boot), It got to a point where it read,

"localhost in DNSResponder: Couldn't read user-specified Computer Name, using default bmacintosh-000393DA42886 instead"

then on the next line said,

"localhost in DNSResponder: Couldn't read user-specified local hostname; using default bmacintosh-000393DA4288 localb instead"

and quickly, then, (I actually photographed the screen to read that!) went to the 'hanging blue screen' as above and stuck there. (and I thought windows was the last source of blue screens I would be plagued by!)

...even while it is hung up on the blue screen, I can here drive activity, indicating that the ibook is doing SOMETHING! I just don't have a clue WHAT!

Oh, and nothing displays on external monitor except the blue screen, when that is what is on the built-in LCD.

and, Oh; I've erased, checked, verified (and redone all this) 3 times to the hard drive.

So, with the evidence gathered above, I'd have to surmise a hardware problem of some sort. I haven't gotten into this ibook beyond the opening of the bottom to heat the graphics chip, so I have not examined the top of the logic board for 'obvious' problems like breaks, scratches, loose parts etc., yet. I have checked the keyboard and trackpad ribbons to be properly seated, and ram properly fitted (as well as removed) so I have tried this with and without added ram; so if it's ram, it must be the onboard ram.

Do any of you have any ideas beyond what I've come up with? Or does anyone know of other tech mac forums where I could post this and get some more eyes to see it, in hopes of finding an answer? Is there any testing or program I could run in SAFE mode to track down the problem?

I'm hoping that this won't end up a parts machine; it's SOOOOOO tantalizingly close to working (and DOES work in SAFE mode!) that I hate to give up on it yet!

thanks for any help or ideas! (and sorry for the long post!)

raynman

[Waragainstsleep]

So if you clean install the dodgy one, then boot the good one from its new install, it boots OK? What if you run all updates and then try the dodgy one again? It is pointing to a logic board issue I'm afraid. You could try opening it up, disconnecting the HD and optical drive, then boot it from the good iBooks drive. See if that gets you anywhere. Disconnect anything else non-essential too like Airport, Bluetooth, RAM etc. Even the battery. If it boots then, it isn't the board. Which is the most important bit. Anything else would be worth repairing.

[raynman]

Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep 

So if you clean install the dodgy one, then boot the good one from its new install, it boots OK? What if you run all updates and then try the dodgy one again? It is pointing to a logic board issue I'm afraid. You could try opening it up, disconnecting the HD and optical drive, then boot it from the good iBooks drive. See if that gets you anywhere. Disconnect anything else non-essential too like Airport, Bluetooth, RAM etc. Even the battery. If it boots then, it isn't the board. Which is the most important bit. Anything else would be worth repairing.

Summary so far: I purchased an ibook with the well-known ATI graphics chip problems, which caused the screen to display garbled graphics and eventually failure to progress in the boot process; attempted repair with heat and shim; ibook PASSED hardware tests on Apple ibook hardware test CD in both long and short forms, BUT;

1) a CD install of Tiger, to the assumed faulty ibook, fails at the reboot into the second CD when the computer hangs at the blue screen with no cursor, beach ball, etc - but DOES continue to make HD sounds like something is going on.

2) a clean install of Tiger via target disk mode to the assumed faulty ibook succeeds, but on restart with local disk, it hangs at the blue screen again. When booted in Verbose mode, the blue screen hang occurs after a line about "localhost in DNSResponder: Couldn't read user-specified local hostname"

3) I can RUN that Tiger install (on the assumed faulty ibooks HD), via Target disk, on a properly running ibook (verifying the install is operable).

4) I can run in SAFE MODE on the assumed faulty ibook with the Tiger install.

5) attempted install of OS 9.1 ends in BOMB - system error - bus error

6) install of Ubuntu Linux Edgy Eft SUCCEEDS! and seems to run properly, as far as I can tell, including airport and ethernet!

So, what is going on in the Mac OS's that causes the system to hang, that doesn't cause the Ubuntu to hang? Does linux "ignore" a (?)hardware fault that causes OS X to fail (hang on blue screen)?

.... and to answer drmbb and Damien, as well as Waragainstsleep; I have tried with and without added ram chip, with and without airport, with the same results, but will try it again, perhaps tomorrow, and let you know; I'll have to do a new install of TIGER again ... Also, I have done a reset PRAM, reset NVRAM, left it set for some time w/o power or battery connection, etc.

Could it be possible that the problem with the ATI graphics chip (the original problem, but perhaps not the ONLY problem, on this machine) could cause such a boot problem in OS X and yet still allow Ubuntu to, apparently anyway, run properly? (Not a hint of any garbled graphics while booting or running Ubuntu)

thanks again

raynman