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Short history on my powerbook.
One day I dropped it. Next morning, it was hot to the touch and the keyboard was melted. Amazingly when I took it to the Apple store, they were apple to turn it on. They fixed it for free.
I installed a 100GB hard drive in it myself. After which, I had to carry my laptop very carefully or the hard drive would skip and the computer would shut off (or so i thought, now I think it was a logic board connection, i don't know)
its been a couple of years, and I dropped my laptop again off my bed onto our wood floor. Now when I power it up, I only hear the superdrive spin. I put my hand on the hard drive once I got the laptop open, and I can't feel anything spinning. Also, the cooling fan won't spin.
My laptop is sitting open and exposed right now in anticipation of a solution. It seems like power isn't getting to all areas of the laptop, but I don't know why the dvd player would receive power. I think there is a disk in there and that is why I hear it spin.
Before I opened the case up I thought that maybe the keyboard and the display quit working and that is why nothing would happen when i tried putting it in transfer mode and transferring it to another computer.
ok, i just tried turning it on with "t" held down. i noticed the cooling fan wobble. but didn't complete a full spin.
It really looks like the logicboard is cooked. You are getting power to the DVD, but something is arresting the start process as indicated by the fan starting and stopping. If your hard drive isn't spinning and the fan isn't starting and there is no video, you can either replace the logicboard or get a new computer. You might try reseating the RAM, which could have been knocked lose, but you probably won't get any help from that because at least some of the ram is soldered to the board, so you definitely have some still operating (or able to operate if there was a working board).
Logic boards are about $100-150 on eBay and since you have it open, you might as well swap it out. I think the G4 is still a great computer, so why not do it.
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If you have the operating systems disk, you can boot from the disc, and once the setup come dump, choose password reset from the "utilities" drop down menu. Change your password, shutdown, and reboot.
Sounds like you have done all you can. The hard drive should be ok and still work in an external case so you can transfer the data to a new machine. Good luck!
How often? Can you make it happen on demand?
Acquire any other USB keyboard, and plug it into a USB port on your PowerBook. Use this keyboard for a while. If you don't see the problem, then I suspect some sort of short in your keyboard cable, or perhaps a spill in the keyboard itself.
PowerBook G4 keyboards are very easily replaced, without opening up the laptop itself.
If you have the original install CD or the OSX CD, boot to CD. To do that you must insert CD, restart PowerBook and hold letter "C" on keyboard while computer is starting, then take the first steps towards installing the OS, when you get to the bar on the top go to Tool>Utilities>Disk Utilities then select the drive a do a disk repair. That may fix the problem and bring your system back to booting normally.
PowerBook G4 is at least a five-year-old machine at this point. A DVD drive can **** in lots of dust in five years. Try hooking up to an external DVD drive. If it plays the same discs with no problem, you need a cleaning or replacement. Frankly, an external DVD drive is cheaper than replacing your internal drive.
copy and paste the complete link into your browser. If I could be of further assistance, let me know. If this helps or solves the issue, please rate it. Thanks, Joe
your lcd probably just went out or the connecting cable just came loose(its in behind the lcd under the apple logo that lights up when you turn it on) if you open and close it frequently it will cause this
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