Is my Powerbook a goner...

The screen now looks like this: http://homepage.mac.com/asauers/.Pictures/downsized_0507082113.jpg
dots/characters/whatever all over the screen. hooking it up to an external monitor shows the same. It's the graphics card isn't it? Is there a way to fix it without replacing the logic board? Any fix over $300 isn't worth it to me for this machine.

Welcome to the Apple discussions.
Have you tried to run your Apple hardware test? Find the original OS X disk that says in small print on the label 'AHT Version x.x'. Insert it and reboot, holding the option key down. Choose the Apple hardware test, click the arrow pointing to the right and follow directions. Choose the extended test. Does that identify any issues?
The video portion of the Powerbook is embedded on the logic board. If it's a goner, then find an Apple store that offers a 'fix everything' for a fixed rate of $325 to $350, if you want to fix it.

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G4 Powerbook screen gone crazy

I have a G4 Powerbook (15" titanium), and just recently the screen has been checkerboarding small rectangles on the bottom third when I boot up. It only does it sometimes and if I run any applications, the screen distortion gets worse and spreads all over the screen. There is a little box of rectangles attached to the pointer as well........
Does anyone have any tips or ideas as to what might be causing this?
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Did you try connecting your powerbook on a different screen and check if its a screen problem or a system problem?
I have the same problems with my powerbook display recently. It flickers and slowly the colours fade out or there are huge lines going through it. Sometimes restarting helps and sometimes it doesnt. When i connected mine on another display the powerbook display was all distorted but the external screen was just fine and i could work and see my desktop clearly.

Can i get a replacement/upgrade for my powerbook?

hi,
my powerbook has gone in for repeat repairs lately, none of which fix the problem.
what are apple's procedures for deciding that the powerbook is just NOT going to be fixed. in other words, when will they just give me a new one?
mac geniuses have replaced hard drive twice, and logic board, and reinstalled OS multiple times, and it still hangs as soon as i get it home.
i'm about to go back to the store, and i want to know what kind of case i have for asking for a new machine. how many times are they going to try to make the same repairs? my warranty runs out in one month, and i need this problem solved before that time comes.

Welcome to Apple Discussions, nay nay.
My understanding is that after three major hardware failures within 12 months you can negotiate for a replacement or refund (depending on the circumstances).
Since you have already had two replacement drives and a logic board, then I think you have a pretty good argument for a replacement. However, they may not always be pro-active in letting you have a replacement so you may have to be prepared to argue your case. If necessary you may have to negotiate directly with the store manager rather than just a Genius.
2.0GHz MacBook, 15" 1.25GHz/12" 1GHz PBs, 2xPPC Mac minis, 12" iBook G4, Mac OS X (10.4.8) Cube, 2xTAMs, iPod 4G & nano 2G, 1G & 2G iPs, AEBS, AX

Schematic drawings and part numbers powerbook 190

Specifically what the adapter plugs into (female) inside the powerbook is gone. I have the original and correct adapter but what receives it inside? I have new one also, I just want to tinker.

You should be able to get a service manual at:
http://z1.micro.umn.edu/ucs/Apple%20Service%20Doc/powerbook_190.5300.pdf

More Time Capsule problems

I'm having problems with my Time Capsule (doesn't everyone seem to?). Just checked my backups on the Powerbook only to be told the last backup was in July. Tried 'backup now' - 'preparing backup' message displayed but never progressed to 'Backing up'. Turned TC off & on again. Entered Time Machine only to find ALL Powerbook backups gone. Now when I try to backup I get a message saying there's not enough room on the TC (650GB required, only 450 GB available). How can this be as the Powerbook only has a 100GB hard drive with around 27GB available? Any ideas?
Update: Latest backup just kicked in. Message window says 'Preparing backup' but menu bar says 'Finishing Backup'
Message was edited by: larrycat

you must be doing the back up wirelessly. The robustness of the network is all important in the wireless scenario.

Black Screen + Flicker

Hi,
The screen on my 15" Powerbook has gone extremely dark. It is still just visible, and is readable if for example I use a torch. It also flickers and does briefly come back on then goes off again. Its stay on slightly longer if the lighting is set lower, although still goes dark again after a few seconds. This problem is consistent for the whole screen, ie it is all dark and there are no specific lines or damage visible. From scanning the topic board, it sounds like this is a problem either with the inverter board or the cable connecting the inverter board. Does this sounds correct, or could it be the backlight itself that need replacing? If it is the backlight, can that specific part be replaced or does the whole screen need replacing?

I think you are right - it very much sounds like either the cable or inverter. I'd open it up and try reseating the cable connectors and jiggling the cable, which costs nothing. If jiggling the cable helps, I would consider replacing it. Otherwise, consider replacing the inverter. Of course, it's possible that it's something else.
I haven't taken the display apart, but my understanding is that the backlight is taped together with the display. I don't know if anyone sells just the backlight parts or not. In any event, I would not sink too much money into repairs, considering the age of the computer.

OSX shuts down suddenly!!!

Three times in the last week, my powerbook has gone black all of a sudden with a message saying "MacOSX must restart or shut down immediately" with no way of saving what I was doing or getting around it. I feel like I'm back on a PC. Is this a hardware/software problem, or is everyone else having this problem? Thanks for your help!

You could do everything, in order, in Dr.Smokes Resolving Kernel Panics and don't leave out any steps.
Quote from Dr.Smoke "My FAQ is a roadmap: start at the beginning and work through to the end, following the instruction in the order specified, including the "If all else fails..." section if a cause or resolution is not found in an earlier troubleshooting step therein"
Cheers!
DALE

Dropped; no power; need to get info off HD

We need to pull the HD out of our old PB_G4 which was dropped on the power connection. There is no power and the battery is dead.
Is there an external power box that I can buy that will accept the HD? I'm not sure how the laptop drives differ from desktop connections. Are they IDE? Anybody have any experience with this? Thanks...
Message was edited by: Pete_MacKay

I have successfully used an adapter like the one in this eBay auction to adapt 2.5" laptop drives to "standard" desktop drive cables:
2.5" Laptop HD to 3.5" Desktop Hard Drive IDE Adaptor
Great care must be used to get it on the correct pins on the laptop drive. Some desktop drive cables have keying or blanked-out pins that can cause problems. But once these minor annoyances are dealt with, these adapters can be very handy. I have used one of these with great success in reading, writing, and initializing laptop drives for powerbooks and ibooks.
Fracturing the pins on the power inlet is a fairly common problem with powerbooks. Sometimes the socket can be re-soldered onto its carrier board. Since everything in powerbooks has gone surface-mount, these parts are not as strong as they would be if the pins from the power socket were inserted into through-holes rather than just surface soldered.

PowerBook 15" - Hard drive gone bust. HELP!!!

Hey guys,
I've got a MacBook Pro and a PowerBook 15" Al 1.67ghz.
The hard drive in my PB has just gone bust, and I don't have the restore disks for OS X 10.5.
Seeing as my MacBook Pro has 10.5, would it be possible to move (via CCC or the like) the OS X from my MacBook Pro onto the new hard drive I've just replaced in my PowerBook? If so, how would I do this? Is it possible to boot from an external hard drive on a PowerBook?
By the way, just so you know, I have paid for both Mac OS X licenses.
Thanks for your help!
Andy

Hi, Andy. No, the OS from the Intel MBP won't run at all on the PowerPC Powerbook. And yes, you can boot the Powerbook from a FireWire (not USB) external drive, provided it contains a suitable PowerPC-native OS version.
You'll need a retail Leopard installer disc set to put Leopard on the Powerbook's new drive. There is no way you can use the MBP's installer discs or its installed OS, directly or indirectly, for that purpose.
You can, however, use the Install/Restore disc(s) that originally came with the Powerbook to install Panther or Tiger (whichever was originally installed on it at the factory). Model-specific discs that came with any other Mac model are very unlikely to work on it.
Message was edited by: eww

PowerBook gone wild with new battery

My son just got a hand-me-down G4 1.5Ghz 15" PowerBook at work. When he got it the battery would not hold a charge for more than about 5 minutes. We checked the serial number and it was part of the PowerBook battery recall so we requested a battery exchange from, Apple. The new battery arrived today and when he put it in, the PowerBook would not start up even on AC.
He reset the PMU and it seemed to be OK but when the computer went to sleep he could not wake it up. He uplugged it and took out the battery but it will not restart. Also, the charge indicator on the AC adapter turned green after about an hour but the battery indicator in the menu bar still says 0%. He pushed the test button on the bottom of the battery but no lights come on so the battery can't be charged.
Anyone see this behavior on another machine? Any suggestions on what is wrong or how to fix it?
Please help.
Thanks,
David

Moving to the PowerBook but Batteries Forum.

It's gonna be hotter than my metal PowerBook G4?

One thing I learned to deal with when I upgraded from my iBook G3 to my PowerBook G4 12" is that the aluminum casing did get hot..and I mean HOT! But I would say that most of the time it was just warm, even "cool" when just checking email for a short time...certainly not hot when it had just been sitting there in sleep mode connected to the AC adapter.
I was hoping returning to the plastic casing would mean not getting scorched and sweaty from a hot metal underside. If you are telling me this MacBook is WAYYYY hotter than my PowerBook, man, that sounds bad! Hopefully I will be lucky with my new MacBook.

Note:
"hot" = temperature is high enough to cause pain or at least discomfort
"warm" = not cool and maybe sweat-inducing, but no real discomfort/pain
Hi there! I have seen one MacBook so far, the black 2.0 GHz model, and it is much cooler than the PowerBook. I had a 12" PowerBook before (1.33 GHz) which, under some circumstances, got hot. When I say hot I mean pain.
Since I have had experiences with four MacBook Pros so far, two 15" and two 17", I was very interested in the heat problems. All of the MBPs are hot. If you stress them for a while, they will burn you. They will probably not cause injuries, but it sure does not feel good. However, the MacBook, as previously mentioned a 2.0 GHz machine, did not get hot at all. It did get warm – after 15 minutes of 100% CPU load it actually got very warm – but not as hot as the MBPs and not even as hot as my old PowerBook.
In conclusion: at 100% CPU load (2x100%, actually) for quite some time, you will have a very warm computer in your lap and you might feel a bit sweaty. However, it will not get hot ("HOT!") like the PowerBooks did. The MacBook does not seem to have the "hot upper left corner" either and the area above the function keys is just rather warm, instead of painfully hot.
Hope this answers your question somewhat. Even though this is a rather subjective matter, I think that I, with confidence, can assure you that the MacBook is at least not hotter than the PowerBook. I just wish that they could do something about the MacBook Pros... I am writing this with the computer in my lap and I know that if I had some background process chewing CPU for a while, it would start to hurt.
Mac OS X (10.4.6)
MBP 17" Mac OS X (10.4.6)

G4 Powerbook (15 " Titanium) screen gone crazy, please help

I have a G4 Powerbook (15" titanium), and just recently the screen has been checkerboarding small rectangles on the bottom third when I boot up. It only does it sometimes and if I run any applications, the screen distortion gets worse and spreads all over the screen. There is a little box of rectangles attached to the pointer as well........
Does anyone have any tips or ideas as to what might be causing this?
Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Apple store genius bar confirm Logic board needs replacing....none available for 4-6 weeks though, and 3 private repairers say parts unavailable
Check the 350+ strong discussion thread under the titanium G4 powerbook forum. This is a problem of epidemic proportions as Ti-books hit the 3 year old mark (unfortunately as most extended waranties like mine have expired!):
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=228423&tstart=0
Rumblings from the masses that apple should acknowledge this problem are growing (the thread detailing thee "fritzed screen" dates back to 2004) so I think we'll hear more about this as the logic board shortages get worse.

IPhone SDK on Powerbook Gone

I know that you arent supposed to put the SDK on non intel macs, but i didnt learn this until AFTER i installed it on my Powerbook G4. It is chewing up a lot of space, and i cant access it to delete it. If anyone knows a way to delete it, please tell me...
Kevin

Yeah, tried it, but decided that since i really dont like to develop anything but Widgets, i'd just delete all of the Developer Folder, (except for DashCode) and this solved it

USB functionality gone on both ports on Powerbook G4

I've posted here with the incident that led to this loss of both my USB ports.
What basically happened is a little (I mean, very little) spark on the left USB port as I was plugging in the cable from my HP CLJ2600n. Then all USB devices stopped mounting/getting recognised by the system.
Don't want to be overly optimistic, but:
•System Profiler reports on all USBs,
•System Profiler reports on all IO Extensions, including the IOUSBxxx Extensions, that they are Valid, Authentic, Dependencies are Satisfied and Integrity is Correct, and
•/usr/sbin/system_profiler in Terminal.app reports on all USBs.
Whenever I plug any USB device on either of the two ports, however, I get the following lines (or similar) in system.log:
Apr 6 12:45:57 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 79. 6 AppleUSBOHCI[0x1d87800] Processing WDH before suspending
Apr 6 12:45:57 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 79. 6 USB Controller on bus 59 received and unrecoverable error interrupt. Attempting to recover (0,0,0)
Apr 6 12:45:57 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 79. 6 AppleUSBOHCI[0x1d86000] Processing WDH before suspending
Apr 6 12:45:57 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 79. 6 USB Controller on bus 27 received and unrecoverable error interrupt. Attempting to recover (0,0,0)
Apr 6 12:45:57 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 79.265 USB Controller on bus 27 received and unrecoverable error interrupt. Attempting to recover (0,0,0)
Apr 6 12:45:57 localhost mDNSResponder: Adding browse domain local.
Apr 6 12:45:58 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 79.429 USB Controller on bus 27 received and unrecoverable error interrupt. Attempting to recover (0,0,0)
Apr 6 12:45:58 localhost configd[41]: WirelessConfigure: 88001003
Apr 6 12:45:58 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 79.656 USB Controller on bus 27 received and unrecoverable error interrupt. Attempting to recover (0,0,0)
Apr 6 12:45:58 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 79.675 [0x1db6b00] The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device that has been plugged in. It will keep retrying. (Port 2 of hub @ location: 0x5b000000)
Apr 6 12:45:58 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 79.833 USB Controller on bus 27 received and unrecoverable error interrupt. Attempting to recover (0,0,0)
Apr 6 12:45:58 localhost configd[41]: initCardWithStoredPrefs failed.
Apr 6 12:45:58 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 80. 79 USB Controller on bus 27 received and unrecoverable error interrupt. Attempting to recover (0,0,0)
Apr 6 12:45:58 localhost configd[41]: WirelessConfigure: 88001003
Apr 6 12:45:59 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 80.327 USB Controller on bus 27 received and unrecoverable error interrupt. Attempting to recover (0,0,0)
Apr 6 12:46:55 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 136.947 ControlTransaction: control packet 1 error 0xe0004057
Apr 6 12:46:55 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 136.977 ControlTransaction: control packet 1 error 0xe0004057
Apr 6 12:46:56 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 136.981 ControlTransaction: control packet 1 error 0xe0004057
Apr 6 12:46:56 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 137. 11 ControlTransaction: control packet 1 error 0xe0004057
Apr 6 12:46:56 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 138.215 [0x1db6b00] The IOUSBFamily was not able to enumerate a device.
Apr 6 12:47:55 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 196.948 ControlTransaction: control packet 1 error 0xe0004057
Apr 6 12:47:55 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 196.978 ControlTransaction: control packet 1 error 0xe0004057
Apr 6 12:47:55 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 196.981 ControlTransaction: control packet 1 error 0xe0004057
Apr 6 12:47:55 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 197. 12 ControlTransaction: control packet 1 error 0xe0004057
Apr 6 12:47:57 localhost kernel[0]: USBF: 197. 15 [0x1db6b00] The IOUSBFamily is having trouble enumerating a USB device that has been plugged in. It will keep retrying. (Port 2 of hub @ location: 0x5b000000)
Does anyone out there think I might have a hardware problem? Or just a software one?
Should I try reinstalling the latest MacOS X Combo Update?
Many thanks, as always, people.
PS I've entered the same post over at 'Using MacOS X Tiger', in an attempt to get some attention since I wasn't sure just where this issue would fit better.

Since this thread is almost starved, and since there seems to be some posts over in the Using MacOS X Tiger area, please post there if you have some idea.
Many thanks, guys.

Upgraded to iPhoto 9.2.1. (lion on powerbook) Photos are gone

Just upgraded to 9.2.1 and my photos have disappeared The initial message was that the library had to be updated and wouldn/t run on earlier versions after the update, it could take hours depending on the size. When the update was complete all the info was correct, numbers and events, but there were no photos in the events. Any fix for this?

What do you see in the Events?

Is my Powerbook a goner...

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