[quietjim]

After four years of faithful service, my Pismo has suddenly stopped working. One evening it simply failed to boot. I'd like to fix it but am wondering what needs to be replaced.

1. At startup, the machine whizzes and comes to a completely gray screen. Same result attempting to boot from CD-ROM's. No response to Target Disk mode boot.

2. Attempting to boot the Hardware Test CD-ROM, I get a little graphic in the middle of the screen that says "loading..." and then the CD Drive goes silent. Nothing else happens.

3. I have swapped out RAM; no result.

4. I have swapped hard disks; no result.

5. One thought I had: this machine has had a fair amount of messing with its hard disk. Is it possible the cable is bad? Can that be replaced? Would that produce these symptoms? If bad hard disk cable...why no boot from CD-ROM?

I'm not a hardware guru but I'm not new to powerbooks or Mac's. This has me stumped. Thanks for any help/thoughts/suggestions!

[Marid]

Did you try resetting the PMU?

IIRC, you hold the PMU button (back lower left) down with a pen for 10 seconds while the Pismo is off.

It may not help, but no harm done if not.

[SEkker]

What about the internal battery? Might be giving you trouble, if it's that old.

[macaddict0001]

I think internal bateries are only in desktops, but i don't know.

[SEkker]

No, all machines have a battery to store some basic info when the machine is off (like time and date). I believe I spotted a replacement part for the Pismos on Otherworld computing's webpage.

The old Motorola clones based on the 4400 motherboard would fail to startup when the battery got below 2 Volts.

Most older macs would just get amnesia and lose data and time info -- each time you'd restart, the date would be 1956 or something.

I'm not sure what the symptoms are for a Pismo, but these machines are starting to become old enough that these (usuallly) lithium batteries will lose their charge.

[bstone]

Zap the P-Ram...see if it works, if not

Then reset the NVRAM...see if it works, if not

Then open it up and reseat everything...see if it works, if not

begin to swap out the RAM SO-DIMMs...see if it works, if not

let us know

[quietjim]

1. Tried resetting PRAM and NVRAM
2. resetting hard disk cable
3. swapping hard disk
4. pressing on CPU to reseat
5. swapping internal battery

The machine chimes and comes up with a gray screen. It sometimes (not always) will display a graphic from the hardware check CD ROM but it does not run the routines.

Does it need a new processor? new logic board? any great diagnosticians out there?

[PeteWK]

Hi Jim. A friend of mine had the video portion of his motherboard go out thus rendering the whole thing useless. I replaced the board for him. It was about 150 dollars on eBay (might be cheaper now). It wasn't the easiest repair I've ever done but it wasn't too bad.

PeteWK