Is it worth it or shall I just sell?

Dead G4 Titanium powerbook

Right first let me say a few little things.

1] I am extremely new to the world of AppleMacs
2] I am even newer to this forum site.

So please forgive me if I am asking stuff that maybe a little basic.

My introduction to the applemac world came about approximately 10 days ago when someone kindly gave me a G4 (400Mhz) Tower which works beautifully. Then just yesterday (24th June) they gave me a 17" G4 powerbook and a 15" G4 Titanium powerbook (so if anyone thinks I am a lucky so and so I will agree with them).

Ok the problems (else why they give them away).

G4 17" works well and I have just reinstalled 10.4 and upgraded all the way to 10.4.11 only problem with this machine is the display is suffering from two vertical lines from top to bottom of display I have been reading about this and it appears that unless I am prepared to pay out for a repair chances are it will get worse slowly.

The real reason for this post is the dead G4 Titanium.
I know this is a fairly old one but other than knowing it has a 20gig hd and the yo yo power supply I have no other knowledge concerning it.
The problem is how can I check whether its the ps thats bad or its the machine. The battery is also totally dead-drained so cannot use that as a means of testing it. I have pressed the test button on the battery and get no lights at all.

I have metered the ps cable and it shows 234v (uk voltage) so it looks like mains plug to ps supply is ok. When I test the power plug which goes into the back of the machine I cannot get any sort of reading. Now it maybe that I am testing it incorrectly so if someone could tell me the right way I would appreciate it.

Should it be that the ps turns out to be fine would it really be worth the money to get someone (apple tech) to look at the G4 Titanium or would I be better off just junking it.

One last question. Not knowing the differences (if any) between the ps for the G4Titanium and the G4 17" would it be safe to plug the G4 17" ps into the G4Titanium or not.

Thanks for any replys.

If the connectors are the same the power supply will work for both

trinimac,

Just send it all to me .. not worth it... LOL just kidding

Your titanium is older but should be still usable. If I am reading correctly
it will just not power up?? if the power ring on any iBook or PB pwr supply
shows up as green or orange you should be ok .. but here the issue I have
run in to on the PB titanium.. If the NVRAM / PMU what ever battery they call
it is dead .. the PB will never start up wont ding or anything.. when the pwr
button is pushed and no amount of key pressing will help..

You have to take the bottom off ... lift up the cd rom underneath disconnect
the battery from the board .. plug it back in and turn it on .. should work..

Let it boot up shut it down ... plug the battery back in .. and off you go

If that does not work.. you may have a logic board issue or something else

Good Luck with every thing .. and you are lucky to be getting all of this
hardware..

Okay in reference to the post above, the cmos battery will not cause your machine to not power up, it will, just not remember time and date, you would have to reset this every time the book reaches desktop. As well If you are certain that the power supply is good, one of the most common problems with the powerbooks are the DC in board a very simple repair, you can pick one up for about 30.00. I do have a tested and working DC in board for the powerbooks if you are interested pm me, but based on what you have explained I will positively say that this is the problem. I certainly suggest the process of elimination on the cheapest route, and starting with this part will be cheapest. 1 DC in,2 PS, 3 logic board. Let me know

powermac G5

No offense suggested here and I'm sure you probably have had more experience with Mac's than I have ...

But in reality, even though it should not have an effect on booting or power
on the system .. I have run in to this very issue 3 times now on 3 different
Titanium PB's the symptoms have been very similar on each one of them
Most recently on a 500Mhz G4 last week the customer brought it to me all
Power indications seemed to be there. Hitting the reset button on the back
did absolutely nothing for the system you could get no indications of life
from the machine.. after taking the bottom off lifting the cd rom
disconnecting the CMOS battery and leaving it disconnected on first reboot
did fix the power up problems..

If this does not work then nothing lost .. I always try things on PB and iBooks
that don't cost any thing before rushing out to purchase parts..

csegeek said:

powermac G5

No offense suggested here and I'm sure you probably have had more experience with Mac's than I have ...

But in reality, even though it should not have an effect on booting or power
on the system .. I have run in to this very issue 3 times now on 3 different
Titanium PB's the symptoms have been very similar on each one of them
Most recently on a 500Mhz G4 last week the customer brought it to me all
Power indications seemed to be there. Hitting the reset button on the back
did absolutely nothing for the system you could get no indications of life
from the machine.. after taking the bottom off lifting the cd rom
disconnecting the CMOS battery and leaving it disconnected on first reboot
did fix the power up problems..

If this does not work then nothing lost .. I always try things on PB and iBooks
that don't cost any thing before rushing out to purchase parts..

Click to expand...

Okay but in a matter of opinion I am currently running ti book with a dead cmos and had never dis and re connected it. Here is the thing upon my journeys of apple repairs I have noticed each machine tends to have a personality of it's own and please no purpose intended but I do know more of a chance with the common DC in board failure, the fact that the battery will not charge when plugged in to a known good power source does tell me no current is traveling through the machine. So as well the suggestion now to the user will be
1 disconnect cmos
2 DC in board
3 PS
4 logic board

Update <<Dead G4 Titanium>><< It's Alive, ALIVE.. >>

Well first let me say thank you to all who replied to my question concerning the Dead G4 Powerbook.

First of all after reading the information so kindly given I took the 65w ps from my 17" G4 Powerbook and used that on the Dead one.
The plug light changed from green to orange when inserted so I guess this indicated that upto that point all was well...

Secondly I removed the base cover, lifted the cd drive and unplugged the internal battery. After flipping it back over and plugging in, it started up straight away and the external battery started to charge.

So I shut it down, reconnected the internal battery and it on trying to power up it just sat there saying ha ha no way. So I unplugged the internal and away it went without any problems. So right now it is running with the internal battery permanently disconnected (until I get a replacement.).

So I would like to say thanks to all those who offered their advice and helped me out with this problem.

Just out of curiosity.
It is my intention to use the 15" G4 as my download and store machine for my camera memory cards. As it only has a 20gig hd, what size hd would this powerbook take. Details are its a 500mhz machine with 512 mem and the standard graphics it originally came with.
Not really after a very large hd but a 80-100gb one would be plenty for my needs if it can handle one.


Thanks all

Trinimac

Trinimac,

That is fantastic that your machine is back up and running.. congrats.

You would be safe with a 120GB ide 5400 rpm hard drive I have run these
In a few of the 500MHz ti's ... you may also be able to run a 250 as long as
you are running Tiger.. but don't think any kernel of *nix have a limitation
on Hard drive size .. the only problem you may run in to is heat issues from
larger faster hard drives.. but I think you should be ok from here..

good luck

Great that you made it work. Just two comments from my side:
1) This is a common problem of the old Powerbooks Titanium. While it often works as csegeek writes, it may be necessary to connect the PRAM battery while the machine is up to make it work for the next time.

2) To powermac G5: There is no DC-In Board in a Powerbook Titanium, it is all on the main logic board.

Johannes

I have reconnected the pram battery after a few reboots (but not while it was running) and it now boots without any problems.

So its a 100% successful outcome thanks to the people on here.

Only thing I now got to do is try to find a solution for the vertical lines on screen of my 17" 1.67Gz powerbook. Which I think is going to make a good dent in my bank account...... oh well.

Trinimac

Hi all,

I have a 17" G4 1.67MHz 100GbHD 2Gig mem PB with airport ex and bluetooth which is working perfectly except for the screen.
The screen itself is working fine BUT is suffering from the vertical dead pixel lines which seem to be a problem with this particular model. It currently has 5 of these lines spaced fairly evenly across the screen and although they are there I can live with it (more or less).

I know that this problem is basically the screen has I have had an external monitor on it and it shows no lines at all.

My queries are.
[1] Is it worth replacing the screen on this machine or should I just sell it as it is.
{2] What sort of price could I expect for this machine with the screen the way it is?
[3] Is there anyway I could disable the screen and just use an external monitor?

Thanks all

Trinimac