Hi All - I just purchased a 12" Powerbook G4 1.33Ghz as parts for a fun repair project. I received all parts except for the hard drive. The powerbook was dropped on the front-right-bottom corner (battery bay) ... it seems to have hit the floor perpendicularly, and amazingly enough, there was no dent or damage to the LCD. I massaged out the dent and it's fairly decent now and the battery fits in fine. Now I'm on to attempting to fix the powerbook to make it operational.
Observations:
- powers up fine
- I hear a chime
- I hear the hard drive spin up (I put in a new, known working hard drive) - I also hear data access to the hard drive, and without a cd or dvd in the drive I get the mac folder icon switching between the mac folder and the ? folder
- reset PRAM (command-opt-P-R) and NVRAM (command line)
- lcd works fine
- no hums or hisses
- battery charges fine
- power port lights correct as orange when charging and green when fully charged
- combo drive works fine - bootup recognizes tiger install cd and techtool deluxe
- boots into techtool deluxe fine
- does NOT boot into the Tiger OSX install screen - it finds the cd to boot but it stays stuck on the Apple logo screen with the spinning color wheel constantly spinning
- trackpad and trackpad mouse works fine
- keyboard works fine
Symptoms
- techtool deluxe hangs while "searching for volumes" - the icon shows "Pending - Processor" with a picure of a micromat processor image
- it's not truly hanging, because I can still click on start/stop and all the menu items on the top (Apple icon, File, Control, Services, Window)
I haven't reset the PMU yet, but that's next, however I doubt it'll fix the issues. I haven't switched out the memory module yet.
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Any experience on the symptoms? Any suggestions on what is wrong? It seems the video GPU works fine... the processor has to be working in order for it to even boot or recognize the cd/dvd and boot up into the software, but it is odd that the techtool program hangs when trying to find volumes.
It sounds like the hard disk controller is damaged? I don't understand how the fall would have damaged the controller only but not the other parts of the logic board. Perhaps I plugged in the hard drive into the logic board incorrectly?
NOTE: I've never repaired a powerbook before, but I've repaired numerous other windows and ibook G3 laptops.
Thanks for reading!
Observations:
- powers up fine
- I hear a chime
- I hear the hard drive spin up (I put in a new, known working hard drive) - I also hear data access to the hard drive, and without a cd or dvd in the drive I get the mac folder icon switching between the mac folder and the ? folder
- reset PRAM (command-opt-P-R) and NVRAM (command line)
- lcd works fine
- no hums or hisses
- battery charges fine
- power port lights correct as orange when charging and green when fully charged
- combo drive works fine - bootup recognizes tiger install cd and techtool deluxe
- boots into techtool deluxe fine
- does NOT boot into the Tiger OSX install screen - it finds the cd to boot but it stays stuck on the Apple logo screen with the spinning color wheel constantly spinning
- trackpad and trackpad mouse works fine
- keyboard works fine
Symptoms
- techtool deluxe hangs while "searching for volumes" - the icon shows "Pending - Processor" with a picure of a micromat processor image
- it's not truly hanging, because I can still click on start/stop and all the menu items on the top (Apple icon, File, Control, Services, Window)
I haven't reset the PMU yet, but that's next, however I doubt it'll fix the issues. I haven't switched out the memory module yet.
------
Any experience on the symptoms? Any suggestions on what is wrong? It seems the video GPU works fine... the processor has to be working in order for it to even boot or recognize the cd/dvd and boot up into the software, but it is odd that the techtool program hangs when trying to find volumes.
It sounds like the hard disk controller is damaged? I don't understand how the fall would have damaged the controller only but not the other parts of the logic board. Perhaps I plugged in the hard drive into the logic board incorrectly?
NOTE: I've never repaired a powerbook before, but I've repaired numerous other windows and ibook G3 laptops.
Thanks for reading!