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Mobile Mod · Sep 4, 2004, 02:25 AM

Hey all! I have looked at this powerbook for a week now and cannot figure out for the life of me what is going on. Basically it was working just fine and then just one day whenever they tried to turn on all it did was kernel panic at the apple logo and the spinning progress circle. So, since we couldnt get past that I tried booting into single user mode and running fsck but all that did was report the system as OK and then I restarted. Same problem so I tried resetting the PRAM. After that the video stopped working. The only way to fix the video was to let it sit overnight.

So, when all is said and done all the powerbook can do is boot into open firmware and then if you type 'mac-boot' it gets to the flashing mac face/? symbol... What do you think is the issue here guys? I was thinking it was the logic board but that is a very very expensive part...

Can anyone help me with this or have any suggestions? Thanks in advance!!

Justin

ibook_steve · Sep 4, 2004, 04:05 AM

Possibly a bad memory DIMM. If you have two, remove one and see how it goes, then switch if you still have problems. If you only have one, you may want to see about getting another one because you most likely have bad memory.

Steve

Mobile Mod · Sep 4, 2004, 10:59 AM

I forgot to mention that I already removed the third party RAM that is in the notebook and now there is only the Apple branded RAM. Should I try and remove that too?

Justin

Detrius · Sep 4, 2004, 07:47 PM

Resetting the PRAM does pretty much nothing with OS X except reset your time zone settings.

Possible easy fixes: your OS is hosed
Possible not fun issues: your hard drive is bad
Other things: blinking ? means it can't find an OS. Logic board, hard drive, cable (not likely), RAM could have corrupted the drive...

Mobile Mod · Sep 5, 2004, 01:26 AM

Well, I am pretty sure that it is the logic board because I cannot even boot to a CD which does not use the hard drive at all and basically is dependent on the logic board being intact. I was looking at the service mannual and even called TSPS but they just agreed with me and said that it is most likely the logic board. Well, thats a $499 part plus shipping plus my store's markup since its no longer under any warranty. In the end its going to run like $900 with tax for the part and labor to put in.

Told the guy this and he wasnt to pleased and kicked himself for not getting apple care while he still could.

If anyone has anything else I would appriciate a reply, but thanks to everyone who has so far...

Justin

ibook_steve · Sep 5, 2004, 03:20 AM

Yes, of course it could be the Apple RAM or it could be one of the two memory slots. Remove the Apple RAM and put the other DIMM in place. You can't boot from anything, hard drive or optical, without good RAM.

Steve

Detrius · Sep 5, 2004, 09:46 AM

Originally posted by Mobile Mod:
Well, I am pretty sure that it is the logic board because I cannot even boot to a CD which does not use the hard drive at all and basically is dependent on the logic board being intact. I was looking at the service mannual and even called TSPS but they just agreed with me and said that it is most likely the logic board. Well, thats a $499 part plus shipping plus my store's markup since its no longer under any warranty. In the end its going to run like $900 with tax for the part and labor to put in.

Told the guy this and he wasnt to pleased and kicked himself for not getting apple care while he still could.

If anyone has anything else I would appriciate a reply, but thanks to everyone who has so far...

Justin

The fact that you can't boot from the CD tells me more strongly that the hard drive is bad.

This could be bad information, as I have no way right now of validating it--it doesn't discuss this in the service manual.

In general, the hard drive is the master device on the ATA bus, and the Optical drive is the slave device. If the controller board on the hard drive is bad, you may not be able to use the optical drive at all, as the master device actually controls the slave device. Therefore, if you can't access either the hard drive or the optical drive, the first place to look is the hard drive, NOT the logic board. Of course, a bad ATA controller on the logic board would cause this, but I have only seen this once in the past year, while I have seen the other case numerous times.

The thing I can't validate right now is whether the two devices are on the same bus. The truth is that they plug in on opposite sides of the logic board. Note, however, that the possibility of two independent ATA busses on opposite sides of the logic board failing at exactly the same time is extremely rare. I'm going to say 95% to 99% odds that this is just a bad hard drive (unless someone can verify multiple ATA busses, then the odds go to 99.9% logic board, but I don't expect that).

Mobile Mod · Sep 5, 2004, 04:38 PM

Well, I am definetley going to try a new hard drive and see if that helps. Just thinking about taking that 17" apart makes me shudder :/

Justin

Detrius · Sep 6, 2004, 03:14 PM

Originally posted by Mobile Mod:
Well, I am definetley going to try a new hard drive and see if that helps. Just thinking about taking that 17" apart makes me shudder :/

Justin

Just don't try removing the logic board. You can break the board if heat is not applied properly to soften the heatsink compound. The same is true for the 15" modules.

Mobile Mod · Sep 6, 2004, 11:02 PM

Originally posted by Detrius:
Just don't try removing the logic board. You can break the board if heat is not applied properly to soften the heatsink compound. The same is true for the 15" modules.

I know, I have done this before and can read the service mannual.

Justin