iBook G4 - Need help in what needs replacing; battery or cord

My mom's iBook G4 first had a green LED light on the cord, next to the laptop. This later changed to an orange LED. Reading up on other topics, green means that the battery is charged, and orange means it's charging.
Later on, she said that there is no light at all, green nor orange. I tried it a few times, norticing that the battery level kept dropping.

The other night, I heard some noise when turning it on, sort of a low hum buzzing type sound. It did turn on, but after a few minutes, it shut off and I noticed a white solid light on the front of the laptop, near the latch to open it.

Now it's just dead. Did the cord go bad? That's my guess, or maybe something inside is not getting a connection.

Any ideas?

It sounds like the battery went completely dead. The charger adapter cord could also have problems especially on a computer that old. A new battery and charger adapter cord could be expensive to replace. You might be able to find a new battery for the iBook on eBay as that would probably be less expensive than buying one from an Apple dealer.

I found them fairly cheap on Amazon. If I have to buy both, I may have to then.

Thank you.

When repairing non-working computers as an at home "DIY repairer"...you need to have known working parts to swap out the suspected bad parts.

We can provide a list of possible "bad" parts...but from there..."good" parts need to be sourced & swapped until the trouble is resolved.

In this case it's very likely the problem could be:

- battery
- charger
- DC In board (this is a small board with the power port on it that can get damaged if someone trips over the power cord...or it can just burn out from use or power surges).

If you knew of someone with the exact same computer (which will be tough with a computer this old)...you could always quickly swap out their battery & try their power cord to see if that fixes things.

But the DC-In board is something more involved (just can't "borrow" someone else's).

Good luck,

- Nick

I re-read my post. I forgot something that may help a lot.

The battery level last showed 53% when shut off. There were no warnings, nothing at all. It just shut off at 53%, and refuses to turn back on.

Vanguard said:

I re-read my post. I forgot something that may help a lot.

The battery level last showed 53% when shut off. There were no warnings, nothing at all. It just shut off at 53%, and refuses to turn back on.

Click to expand...

Try a PMU reset:

Resetting PowerBook and iBook Power Management Unit (PMU)

- Nick

I had an original message here, but I am writing up a new one. I did what you said, and at first, I saw no sign of life.

Maybe it's because I used the cord and took the battery out, but it powered on, even with a green light (no battery).
I turned it off, plugged in the battery, and it powered on again, now at 1% battery, but climbing slowly.

So thanks for the link! It seemed to have done the trick.