Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

sinebubble · Jan 2, 2006, 08:32 PM

I have a Pismo that I'm trying to revive. The system will start and deliver the proper chime. The LCD will light up, but display nothing but the default gray. The system is missing the internal battery as well as the "backup battery (attaches to motherboard). Also missing a CD/DVD module. I'm not entirely clear if the hard drive has an OS image on it, but I would expect if the system was missing an OS, I would at least get the flashing question mark. Any ideas on how to proceed with this?

rjt1000 · Jan 3, 2006, 10:52 PM

Hi,

If you have a firewire drive with a bootable OS, you could try to boot from that. If you dont have one, you could ask someone at the support desk in an apple store. They usually have a bootable firewire drive for testing purposes.

Enjoy the Pismo. Its a great machine.

Rich

G4 12 inch rev C (but still got my Pismo)

sinebubble · Jan 4, 2006, 03:25 AM

Actually, I do have a bootable firewire drive, but the system did not attempt to boot from it. I'm tempted to buy a new motherboard, but I'm afraid I may be throwing good money after bad. Obviously the sound card and pmu work or the system would not boot. The lcd must work as it does light up and display a gray background. No funky RAM chimes. If the CPU was bad, would the system even chime at start?

Eriamjh · Jan 4, 2006, 12:55 PM

Hook up the FW drive, reboot and hold the Alt key. It should display a list of useable boot volumes after a minute or so. If the FW system is bootable, you can select it and try it.

Have you tried booting into Open Firmware? Reboot and hold CTRL-OPTION-O-F until you see the open firmware screen.
Then type

reset-nvram (enter)
reset-all (enter)
reboot(or mac boot or something like that)

That might help.

If you don't get open firmware, you might have a CPU problem. Pop the keyboard, remove the EMC shield and make sure the CPU is fully seated. Do this with no batteries or AC connected.

sinebubble · Jan 5, 2006, 03:22 PM

Unfortunately, that did not work.

A motherboard is a lot cheaper to replace than a CPU. I may just replace that first. If it's not the solution, I think I'm done with trying to resurrect this pismo.

lgtmvt · Jan 5, 2006, 06:49 PM

Batteries-Batteries

I say it twice because the pismo is unhappy, to say the least without them.

Eriamjh · Jan 5, 2006, 07:38 PM

Yeah. Batteries are important. Get a good battery (PRAM and regular).

sinebubble · Jan 5, 2006, 08:04 PM

Okay, it doesn't have a PRAM battery, but I don't think it needs a regular battery as it's plugged in and that should be enough. I think the PRAM battery is just used to store OS values. Is it really necessary to boot? I never experienced that in the past.

romeosc · Jan 5, 2006, 10:37 PM

Originally Posted by sinebubble

Okay, it doesn't have a PRAM battery, but I don't think it needs a regular battery as it's plugged in and that should be enough. I think the PRAM battery is just used to store OS values. Is it really necessary to boot? I never experienced that in the past.

If the pram battery is dead a Pismo won't boot! You can buy one for about $15

Eriamjh · Jan 5, 2006, 10:46 PM

Originally Posted by romeosc

If the pram battery is dead a Pismo won't boot! You can buy one for about $15

Where? I've looked all over and either it's $30 for a new one or $20 for a used "pull".

They are rechargeable aren't they? So a dead one may just need to sit in a powerbook with a charged battery for a while, right? (I know they do eventually die like any rechargeable.)

shunt · Jan 6, 2006, 02:25 AM

Originally Posted by romeosc

If the pram battery is dead a Pismo won't boot! You can buy one for about $15

This is completely false...my Pismo pram battery has always been unplugged and it boots no problem (with or without the main battery--AC of course).

Sinebubble, here's a link to some boot/key-combos...http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/ASCC/doc...n/mackeys.html

Try zapping pram (hold for 2 chimes), reset powerbook display, boot from external drive combo, and even target mode from your G4 using that guide. Your machine is new world rom.

Also shut down and push the little button on the back near the modem port, wait a few seconds and restart--also maybe bad ram.

I know that the old iMacs would give a grey screen if too large a harddrive was installed without an 8 gig partition but this is different.

Also try hooking up an external VGA monitor and see what happens.

Good luck.