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Rakarth · Sep 22, 2006, 02:20 PM

OK heres the story. When I met my fiance in 2003 she had an ibook (12" something like 900mhz, 384mb RAM), and I had my own computers which were all windows machines.
Eventually, we noticed something strange was going on... files were disappearing from the hard drive at random. Eventually we ended up with a flashing ? icon, and so I ran the hardware test and found out the hard drive had died.... and so the ibook was retired into its carrying bag for a while. Last fall I happened upon a 30gb laptop drive, and I actually managed to remove the 60 million screws it took to get into it, and I replaced the hard drive successfully. Next I attempted to reinstall mac osx 10.2, and it stated to work.. then the battery died, and the power cord would not work. So the mac went back into it's carrying bag for another 9 months. Just a couple of weeks ago, I got a new power cord from my father's office (he is in the news industry and they use macs for quark express). So I got everything installed and it all worked great.

Then I decided I wanted to install open office and Java so I could use it in my programming class since all of my other computers are desktops.....

Well osx 10.2 doesnt support the newest version of java, and it doesnt support gtk for open office.. so i did some research and found a walkthrough on how to install linux on an ibook. everything went fine, and I did the install of debian.... well when it came time to reboot the system, I got the "apple chime" sound and then nothing. just a black screen. I put the osx cd back in to see if I could boot from that and that didn't work either. I tried the O+F boot, R+F ect. Anyone have any ideas as to what to do?

pat++ · Sep 22, 2006, 08:14 PM

i assume you tried resetting the PRAM? command-option-P-R ?

ibook_steve · Sep 22, 2006, 08:18 PM

I don't know what R+F is supposed to do if anything, but to get into open firmware, hold cmd-opt-O-F.

Steve

Rakarth · Sep 22, 2006, 08:59 PM

I tried P+R and O+F, both get me no where, as well as C to boot from cd

Rakarth · Sep 26, 2006, 08:32 AM

Please help there must be some guru out there who knows what I can do. Isn't there something equilvalent to resetting the CMOS battery by hand? Like a jumper to pull, or a battery to pull or anything? All I want to do is get OSX back on there.

aristobrat · Sep 26, 2006, 08:51 PM

When you say "P+R", you're also holding the option and command (Apple) keys at the same time, right? Holding those four keys at right after powering on is the only way I've seen of resetting it.

Rakarth · Sep 29, 2006, 01:04 PM

Yes I was holding the correct keys down, and it doesn't respond to anything I do. I have tried option+apple P+R, O+F, C, ect. I changed one of the boot variables in open firmware to get the linux installer to load, but, I dont see why that would cause the P+R or C to stop from working the way they used to.

thebiscuit · Sep 29, 2006, 04:47 PM

You sure you're remembering to press the key combinations at the right time...best thing to do is as soon as you hear the chime to bash the keys and hold them down till something happens.

Rakarth · Oct 2, 2006, 01:35 PM

As soon as I hit the power button I move my fingers as fast as I can to hold down option+apple+whatever. I hold them down and wait atleast 45 seconds usually, I have tried it many times, hoping for a miracle each time.

At first I thought the keyboard might not be hooked up correctly, but the lights come on when I hit the cap lock key, indicating that it is hooked up correctly.

Any other ideas would be appreciated. I will keep checking these forums until I figure something out.

aristobrat · Oct 2, 2006, 05:58 PM

If the PRAM reset won't go, how about a PMU reset?

"Performing a PMU reset returns the iBook and PowerBook hardware, including NVRAM, to default settings and forces the computer to shut down."

Resetting PowerBook and iBook Power Management Unit (PMU)

Bobby · Oct 4, 2006, 08:02 PM

I actually had an issue at one point in time where I could not zap the pram (but otherwise it worked fine). One day it finally did zap and shortly thereafter it began to have problems with the black screen of death following startup...

I never did figure out why the pram didn't origionally zap, though in a way I kinda was wishing I had never done it after getting my first BLKSOD...

Rakarth · Nov 4, 2006, 12:25 PM

Thanks for the tip aristobrat, I will try that tonight.