Powerbook g4 dvi won't boot

when powered on, the light on the power adapter is green, the battery charges, if i press the caps lock on keyboard it light up green, but there is no chime and no further boot.
so i changed the ram, switched the slots- no differnce and the ram works in my pc based laptop.
took the bottom apart and removed the logic board. cleaned the dust, put it back together without the screws and bottom case. boots and works fine for few times, sufficient enough to run diagnostics with apple hardware test and the logic board passes along with ram etc., boots into os with hard drive, the airport card works. behaves as if nothing is wrong.
happily i put together the screws and the case cover-- same problem. does not boot. when powered on -- no cd start, no chime, no boot.
my guess-- the lid close switch is stuck but i could not find it?
any other suggestions are welcome.

Hi t,
I believe eww is correct that it is not the sleep switch. As he mentioned earlier, you need to look closely at the bottom cover to see where something is coming in contact with it. Note: it may be that the short (as you have surmised, I'm quite sure that's what it is, the question is where it is) may be a conductor coming into contact with the bottom cover, OR it may be that the bottom cover is pushing something else up, causing a short in another area. The fact that you have to remove/install the logic board to get it to boot again after installing the bottom cover seems to suggest this latter possibility, that once something is forced out of place by the bottom cover, then it must be "dislodged." Tolerances in these PBs are very tight.
Or, it may be your theory that a circuit has to be reset is correct. To test, try resetting the PMU, and if that doesn't do it, try unplugging the power adapter, removing the main battery, removing the bottom cover, and letting it sit for about 10 minutes, then, without the bottom cover on and without removing/installing the LB, power up again and see if it will boot. If it does, this would seem to confirm the "circuit reset" idea. If not, I would lean towards the idea that the bottom cover has pushed something out of place, causing a short.
As for a fix, to start, I would lay the PB upside down, display closed, bottom cover off, static precautions in place, and lay a straight edge across the bottom to see if you can determine where contact is being made. Also take a look at the bottom cover itself to see if it has been pushed in at any point. Post back with results.

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Message was edited by: Nyati585

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Message was edited by: rick268 Also, I can boot into Open Firmware just fine.

Thanks for your help.
WeLoveMacs wanted $50, but I just scored an entire topcase on eBay for $15, shipped. We'll see what happens.
Allan Jones wrote:
I maintatined three Wallstreets for a friend for years. They stayed in regular service from new until he replaced them with MacBook Pros last summer!
In the years of keeping the old soldiers almost relavent, I ran into a "won't boot from a system disk" issue on two of them. In both cases, replacing a dead PRAM battery fixed the issue. Don't ask me why but that was the only thing that fixed them.
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Welcome To  Discussions ReRick!
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ali b

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Powerbook g4 dvi won't boot

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