Random shutdowns/backlight shutoff.

Question

Hi - I'll try to keep this saga brief, but that may be a tall order considering the circumstances.
Back story:
The first time I sent my iBook G4 in to AppleCare was June 2006, when the display was showing a single, pixel-high line across the bottom of the screen (about 1/2 inch up from the bottom) when I would adjust the angle of the lid. It came back fixed, but with a worse display issue! Instead of just a line, the screen would now flicker (NOT a backlight problem, in random stripes across the display itself) and turn to grayscale instead of the normal colors. It did this in response to the slightest vibrations (typing, touching the trackpad) and adjustments of the lid. I sent it in again with explicit information about what caused the malfunction and how to replicate it.
The iBook was promptly sent back to me, without any contact being made beforehand, because the techs "couldn't recreate the problem." Great. Allow me to note that I "recreated" the problem the FIRST time I booted it up out of the return box from AppleCare - within about thirty seconds. Needless to say, at this point I was less than pleased. I wound up taking the iBook into the university bookstore, where we have an Apple tech but not a full genius bar. I was able to show him the problem in person and leave the iBook in his care. Several days later, I found out that he had to ship it off to AppleCare anyway because it was something they'd looked at before.
It finally came back and yes, the display was no longer going wonky, but I now had a lid that would not align properly and thus would not latch, a non-working microphone, and a small scratch on my LCD. I had let the lid and scratch slide for a couple of weeks, but was getting ready to call Apple Care about the microphone (I needed it for a class) when my hard drive decided to take a nosedive. Over a series of a few crashes, in the midst of which I was able to back up my most important materials - thank goodness - the hard drive completely died and the iBook would eventually either only boot up to a blue screen, a gray screen with the apple and spinning gear, a gray screen with nothing, or a blue screen with an OS 9 icon in the middle. Off it went to Apple Care, AGAIN.
It came back today with a new hard drive. I used it for a few minutes before retrieving my power source, thinking it would be fine since though my battery runs down quickly, it was showing a 65% charge and I had a few minutes. At this time, I was still using the pre-installed Panther and getting ready to reinstall Tiger and all my other stuff. I was chatting on iChat when the iBook completely shut down.
I went and got my power source, plugged it in, and booted back up. I got an error message saying my date and time was set to some time before 2001... Except when I actually checked my clock/calendar, it was set to the correct time. My friend suggested I might need to do a PMU reset, so I shut down and did so.
The iBook worked fine for a couple of hours, until my backlight randomly turned off. It did NOT go to sleep - the backlight just turned off. This has never happened to me before - I could barely make out the outline of my open windows on the screen, so I knew it was the backlight out and not a crash. I closed the lid and the backlight flickered on the way down. When I re-opened it, the light came back on.
Several hours later, after I'd reinstalled Tiger, with a 99-100% charged battery, with my power source plugged in and the light green - another crash. I believe this was an ACTUAL crash, like the first one I described. I attempted to restart the iBook and it wouldn't power back up. I tried several times, then did another PMU reset, and it finally booted back up.
MOMENTS after it powered back up from crash #2, crash #3 occurred. Or so I thought. The iBook would again not respond to the power button, so I shut the lid and heard a chime after it was shut. I reopened the lid and the iBook was booting back up. I don't know if this was a backlight malfunction I mistook as a crash, or what.
Note: none of the times the laptop actually CRASHED did I get a low battery warning or any advance indication I was having some sort of a power failure.
On to another backlight failure: it was about an hour after the last crash. I was configuring some World of Warcraft settings in windowed mode, with the battery at full charge and the power source plugged in and green. The screen went black and the laptop made a clicking/swishing noise I associate with shutting down. As I was preparing to throw it at the wall (kidding) I noticed that I still felt a slight vibration and heard a slight humming from the body of the iBook. I listened and looked carefully, and sure enough, the iBook was still running, but the backlight had again failed. (Apparently the backlight shutting down is the noise I'm familiar with.) I moved my cursor around, tried hitting "esc" and doing other "wake up" things but nothing would work. This time, shutting and reopening the lid also did nothing. I couldn't see anything to do a regular shutdown, so I did a hard shutdown by holding down the power button. Upon rebooting, the backlight worked like a charm.
Thirty minutes after this, I experienced another actual crash - complete shutdown of the system. I was playing World of Warcraft in fullscreen mode when the screen went black and all system stopped. No noise, no vibrations - it was definitely off this time. I attempted to power back up but again the iBook would not respond to the power button. I closed and reopened the lid, and it still would not respond. I reset the PMU and nothing happened. Finally, I removed and reinserted the battery and it then booted up. Upon booting this time, I again got the clock/calendar set to pre-2001 message, and yet the clock and calendar were both set to the correct time. The battery showed 97% charge, and the power supply had been connected the entire time.
So, that leads me to now. I have no clue what is wrong with it at this point and I am absolutely frustrated that every time I send this thing into Apple Care it comes back with problems - either the same problems, not fixed, or entirely new problems it didn't have before.
I'd really appreciate it if somebody could give me a clue what might be going on here. I repaired permissions, attempted to repair the disk (no repair was necessary) and am currently getting all the updates to take me from OS X 10.4 to 10.4.8. I'm just frustrated because I'm the only person I know out of a whole bunch of very happy Mac customers to have this many problems - I really feel like I have a lemon, but I was told last time I spoke to Mac that they won't completely replace my unit unless I have the SAME problem repaired three times. I'll avoid getting ranty here, and I do plan to call Apple Care in the morning (Saturday 12/1) but I thought I'd post here anyway to see if anybody had any ideas or anecdotes they'd like to share.
Some ideas I have that could be wrong:
-- Logic board failure (Could explain the prior display issues and hard drive failure, I think)
-- Battery (I know it's not holding a charge well, but I don't see what that would have to do with the backlight)
-- Backlight out (Unrelated to crashes?)
That's all I've got. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Hi, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
random stripes across the display itself
Sounds like the infamous logic board problem that plagued the iBook G3 (Dual USB).
When the iBook does a hard shutdown, it would be normal to get the message about the date being wrong. It's possible that if it automatically connects to the internet, it may immediately automatically reset so that when you check it, it's correct.
Backlight problems? Again, familiar to many G3 owners:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=207731&tstart=0
AppleCare's your best bet, but this will give you some "light" reading and something to think about until you get them called.
Good luck.