Frankenmac - Weird Issues After Build

Question

A friend of mine has been putting together a "new" iBook out of spare components from other iBooks. He has a G4 800MHz logic board, bottom case, top case, and Combo Drive from one iBook, a DC-In Board from another, a display assembly from a third, and a hard drive from somewhere else. He put it all together, and this is what happens:
When it tries to boot, the fan comes on and stays on
The eject button doesn’t work
When you press the F5 button, the number lock light comes on
The display only comes on, maybe, one out of twenty startup attempts
Could it be that the logic board is no good, or could it be some other hardware issue? The PMU has been reset several times and a couple of hard drives have been tried.
Any thoughts or suggestions would be appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi Chris,
Have you tried booting from the CD? Do you hear any beeping noises? The display may have been install incorrectly; did you remember to reconnect the display data cable? You may want to look at Knowledge Base Document #106214 on Troubleshooting Startup Issues. Do you have access to another Mac? Can you hear the hard drive spinning? You may be having a problem with the reed switch. There are many problems that could be causing this; do you know that all the parts were working when you got them?
Jon
Mac Mini 1.42Ghz, iPod (All), Airport (Graphite & Express), G4 1.33Ghz iBook, G4 iMac 1Ghz, G3 500Mhz, iBook iMac 233Mhz, eMate, Power Mac 5400 LC, PowerBook 540c, Macintosh 128K, Apple //e, Apple //, and some more...  Mac OS X (10.4.5) Moto Razr, iLife '06, SmartDisk 160Gb, Apple BT Mouse, Sight..