Failure to boot under any troubleshooting methods

Question

I have here yet another "dead iBook" question which is just different enough to warrent a new thread.
It's a first gen. G4 iBook, 1GHz, 12.1", 60GB HD, 512MB added RAM module, Airport Extreme card, original battery. It was bought refurbished from Apple and has been through one (1) logicboard replacement. I believe it was running the latest OS version from a month ago (late March 2006).
1. The owner of the machine for whom I'm troubleshooting said that it was running normally until he hit a system freeze (not a kernal panic, just something that required a hard restart). 2. He held the power button, it turned off, then he booted again. The chime sounded but the screen stayed black. 3. Switched off, then tried booting again. This time, no chime, no display, and fan at full blast. So he came to me.
I've tried all the tips and tricks listed in the popular Apple support page concerning boot troubleshooting, and resetting the PMU with both the battery and DC in causes the power indicator to change color for a moment, so at least that does something. The catch seems to be that the iBook can't even start the boot process. I'll explain:
1. While the machine definitely responds to the power button (only for on, I can't hold the button to turn it off) that's about all it does beside spin the fan at full. Also, if the iBook is tipped or jiggled the fan makes a harsher noise, but there's no physical damage to the fan that I can see.
2. No chime
3. I put in the restore CD but can't boot from it. Holding C just doesn't work. Holding the mouse button at boot fails to eject the CD.
4. No Single User mode, no Open Firmware mode, no Verbose mode, no Safe mode, no PRAM reset indication.
5. Using a 1GHz eMac as the primary computer, cannot mount drive in target disk mode.
6. Removed Airport and RAM, tried above with combinations of DC, battery, and waiting a really long time (e.g. holding keys for open firmware for 38 minutes), none of which succeeded in producing anything different.
7. It all sticks at the black, non-backlit screen.
So I used the ifixit guide to remove the harddrive and stick it in a USB 2.0 enclosure. I was able to mount the drive this way, and the HD name appeared on the desktop, but when I tried to access the contents, the finder hung, animated process monitors froze, and the external drive itself spun up and spun down rapidly and repeatedly. Sounds like a bad drive. Therefore I borrowed a spare 2.5" drive (formatted capacity 4.9GB) and tried to install Tiger on it over the USB enclosure. Boot said eMac from CD, but Installer says the OS can't boot from this volume and thus can't install to it. So I format the disk again (HFS+ Journaled), no luck; then zero it, no luck; then partition it with enough space for install (required 4.7GB), no luck. Maybe it's the USB.
Put this small temporary drive in the iBook hoping that I could boot from the restore CD that was still stuck in the drive and install the OS to this functioning drive. Same problems as before. It just won't respond to any input.
Thanks for reading all that, I hope it was coherent. I wonder if the short answer will be "convince your pal to wait for a spiffy new 13.3" MacBook."
iBook G4 12.1" 1GHz Mac OS X (10.4.5) 512MB, 60GB HD

Answer 1

Hello.
Before you start applying pressure here and there, or replacing parts, may I suggest something? My wife's iBook went through a similar spell, but is working fine, now. I had heard all kinds of advice (from a bad logic board to a bad hard drive) from Apple and from people on this discussion board. I was even chastised for allowing my wife to leave the iBook powered on all the time (even though it went to Sleep every night).
The problem occurred during the first week of April, when the 10.4.6 update was released. I'm not saying the update caused the problem, but I am saying the problem occurred at about the same time as the release.
Here's what we did:
Unplug the power cord.
Remove the battery.
Plug in the power cord. (Yes, you can power up the iBook or almost any Apple laptop without a battery installed).
Power up the iBook.
If the screen is grey for more than 5 minutes, hold down the power button until the machine powers off, then try powering it up again.
If the screen is grey with an Apple icon, I'd recommend just being patient. Eventually, my wife's computer did a full boot, shut itself down, restarted, and stabilized for about 5 minutes before it shut itself down again. The fan seemed to run faster than normal as the noise was very noticeable. Eventually, after repeating the process, when the computer restarted, it stayed on and the noise was gone.
When her iBook came back up, no files were lost and it returned to normal operation. She did a normal shutdown, put the battery back in, and it's been fine ever since (the past 14 days).
If you have the same results, I'd recommend backing up all of your data to an external drive, or burn it to a CD/DVD. If you end up having to send the computer in for repair, you're data will rarely remain intact, especially with a hard drive replacement. Besides, it's always a good idea to back-up your data regularly.
Good luck.
Rob K.