[Gamoe]

I just finished replacing the DC board for an iBook G4. I made sure all the cable connections were secure before putting it back together. It isn't a complex repair. Only the bottom casing and shield need to be removed.

But, when I boot it up now it just stalls at startup. It gets to the gray Apple, but does not display the progress circle at the bottom. I tried booting it up in verbose mode using command-V, but that doesn't do anything. Half of the time it stalls even before the Apple when I try this. Both the hard drive and the optical drive are getting power, because I can clearly hear them spinning up.

I tried to boot off the Tiger Install DVD, but the drive just spins up. The keyboard is connected because I can reboot, though I don't get the pointer, so I haven't been able to test the trackpad, but there's no reason it should be disconnected, considering I didn't even open the top case.

I'm pretty certain all cables were securely in place at least till the point I put the cover back on. I suppose it's not impossible that something might have come loose, but unlikely. Anyone have any ideas of what's going on here, and, more importantly, a solution?

[seanc]

So you can't boot to any media. Could be an internal ATA issue. Perhaps a loose ATA cable. Can you boot to an external FireWire drive?
Is all the RAM seated properly?
What happens if you unplug the new DC board?

[Gamoe]

Originally Posted by seanc 

So you can't boot to any media. Could be an internal ATA issue. Perhaps a loose ATA cable. Can you boot to an external FireWire drive?
Is all the RAM seated properly?
What happens if you unplug the new DC board?

I am thinking its a hard drive issue now too, because I was just able to boot off the Tiger DVD. Why it didn't ask me for a system folder, though, is a mystery to me. Anyway, Startup disk doesn't show the hard drive as an option. Hopefully it is just a loose cable, though how the hard drive cable could have come loose is beyond me.

[Gamoe]

Disk Utility was able to see the hard drive. I tried to "repair" the volume, but it gave me an "invalid sibling link" error and reported that it failed to fix it.

The hard drive is definitely the prime suspect here. This iBook often hung a moment or two before starting up from the hard drive before this happened, and would regularly ask for a system folder before booting up from the hard drive.

If the problem truly is the hard drive, then the solution is obvious and not very difficult. But could this be a bad cable, connector, or something else instead? What other possible points of failure lie between the hard drive and the logic board?

[Big Mac]

What makes you think it's anything other than the drive at fault? That's the simplest explanation. If it were anything else, chances are it wouldn't even be detected.

[nredman]

my wives ibook g4 has been freezing up on here a lot lately - sometimes at starting but usually while she is using firefox - it will start loading a page and the freeze up

i'm trying to figure it out

[Gamoe]

Originally Posted by nredman 

my wives ibook g4 has been freezing up on here a lot lately - sometimes at starting but usually while she is using firefox - it will start loading a page and the freeze up

i'm trying to figure it out

Sounds like it could be RAM, too. This is why I'm hesitant to say that it's the hard drive for sure on my iBook.

[Gamoe]

I'm running the iBook off an external firewire hard drive now. The internal hard drive was still visible on the desktop, but after a restart it became unrecognizable to the OS. I haven't written to the drive since this issue began (only to fix permissions and try to "fix" it). Could this be indicative of a loose cable or is this still consistent with a bad hard drive?

[RTFM]

Your logic board is bad. But this is specific to the ata-bus off your hard drive. Or some chip related to the hard drive's ata bus. I'd bet you can boot without a hitch off a fw drive, or your DVD OSX installation. This has been my case. I initially thought to be a hd problem, replacing 2 HDs in a row. I later try the same drives with special adapters for my desktop. And guess what? They all work fine.
Contrary to popular belief. The Logic board failure extends beyond the video chipset. It's failure of bad solder points that crack over time. And it could be ANY chip. That's why it works when you apply pressure down on the case. Basically you're joining the bad solder points by force.

Apple is cooking up numbers saying that only a minority of users are experiencing these problems. Instead of saying that only users who bought extended warranties are the ones complaining about this problem.

There's a petition online for users with ibook g4 logic problems, but it only pertains to users who experience video problems.

iBook G4 logic board Petition