IBook behaving oddly

A friend asked me to help with his failing iBook, a 12" 800MHz with 128Mb and an addition 256 ram chip. It's running 10.4.+ When it's picked up the screen breaks up and, disappears and generally displays a mass of vertical broken lines. My initial reaction was that it is a hard disk failure so I brought it into the office today to pop in a replacement. However, I firstly took out the 256 ram and thought that I try it without that first. All was well for an hour. I was able to run disk utility, repair disk etc. Then I saw that it was asking to update Safari so I let it only to find that 7/8ths through, it hung. Having rebooted it seems fine on the desk but to move it causes screen chaos. Now one of the most important tips here is that John pointed out that the date had defaulted to something like 01/01/1999. Having reset it last week, I noticed today, we were back in 1999. This indicates to me that the system battery is failing fast. Can this be replaced and if so, where is it? I have to say this iBook hasn't seen much action and visually it's like new. Before I reach for the spanners, has anyone experienced this before and can throw some light on the subject? Thanks, Barry

Hey Barry,
When it's picked up the screen breaks up and, disappears and generally displays a mass of vertical broken lines.
That's a classic graphics processor unit (GPU) problem. In the G3 it sits on the bottom under a square bump on the lower shield. You can put a shim in there to assure good contact.
A permanent fix would be to pull the logic board and send it out for reballing of the GPU. $79 at Superior in IL.
Having rebooted it seems fine on the desk but to move it causes screen chaos.
Right there's like 250 tiny "balls" of solder that hold that chip to the logic board they come loose due to board flexing. I feel this is exacerbated due to the hinges getting stiff.
Now one of the most important tips here is that John pointed out that the date had defaulted to something like 01/01/1999. Having reset it last week, I noticed today, we were back in 1999. This indicates to me that the system battery is failing fast. Can this be replaced and if so, where is it? I have to say this iBook hasn't seen much action and visually it's like new.
There isn't a PRAM battery in the iBook. This function is done by a super capacitor ( .22 Farads @ 5.5 V ) I have seen these fail in old iBooks.
They look like this:
http://site.mcminone.com/product/31-0750
but instead of end fed they're top and bottom w/ the top lead bent over to the opposite end.
These will only hold settings for 30 seconds or so. Long enough to change the battery. So if that's gone a small transient would cause the PMU to lose settings.
That would have nothing to do with the video problems you see however.
Richard
Message was edited by: spudnuty
Message was edited by: spudnuty

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