⟐ Commented 五月 01, 2020 at 19:03 GMT-7

After five years of use and abuse, my old PowerBook is showing its age. The DVD drive, main battery, and the PRAM battery are dead; and the LCD backlight, latch, and hinge are failing.

Because I can't justify the cost of the replacement battery and such, and due to the damaged LCD panel and hinge, I plan to use it as a small desktop Mac, with an external display, keyboard/mouse, and DVD drive attached. To prevent overheating, I would like to remove the LCD panel entirely. This way, I can simply place the "headless PowerBook" upright in a stand, behind an external 17" LCD monitor I have - a sort of "DIY iMac".

However, once I pull the LCD panel assembly out (Via this tutorial) is there anything I need to do to operate it safely without the panel? For example, do I need to make a cover for the back of the computer? What do I do with the monitor data and grounding cable?

Thanks for any tips!

⟐ Answer edited 九月 12, 2014 at 6:45 GMT-7

⟐ Commented 四月 03, 2018 at 19:34 GMT-7

What happens now:

• Power cable light stays green whichever battery is installed
• Menu bar battery icon shows power plugged in, 0% charge for both batteries
• If I shutdown, unplug power, plug it back in, and startup I get a "You're computer's clock is set to a date before March 24 2001, etc." warning dialog
• Sometimes when I restart or swap batteries the power cable will go orange for a few seconds but the Menu Bar icon never moves off 0% and the cable always goes green after a few seconds

Battery #1

• Charge remaining (mAh): 0
• Charging: No
• Full charge capacity (mAh): 1973
• Health Information:
• Cycle count: 334
• Condition: Good
• Battery Installed: Yes
• Amperage (mA): 0
• Voltage (mV): 4133

Battery #2

• Charge Information:
• Charge remaining (mAh): 0
• Charging: No
• Full charge capacity (mAh): 943
• Health Information:
• Cycle count: 0
• Condition: Good
• Battery Installed: Yes
• Amperage (mA): 0
• Voltage (mV): 7529

What I've tried:

1. Resetting PMU
2. Lots of battery swapping and cable jiggling

Suggestions? I have to open the computer to replace a noisy fan anyway so replacing stuff inside is not a problem.

Does the clock issue represent a PRAM battery failure? Could that cause the main battery to not charge? Maybe the PMU reset doesn't work without a functional PRAM battery?

⟐ Answered 四月 17, 2011 at 8:40 GMT-7

Chris: The latest version does not like my ROM but I am able to run 6.1 from the cd. After checking it out for a week or so if all goes well I will do a full install. Thanks to all for your input. Ralph

⟐ Answered 十二月 25, 2019 at 2:43 GMT-7

⟐ Answer deleted 二月 24, 2016 at 14:48 GMT-7

Occasionally, just randomly, the screen will light up with no external video attached, but it seems to be about one of 10 attempts, and like I stated, randomly, and not in response to anything in particular.

I'd hate to conclude that this is a bad board, and it seems like there must be a fix. It seems as if something is "stuck". Anyone know how to reset the PRAM without the keyboard? There are power and PMU power-on pads, but none for PRAM that I know of.

Thanks

⟐ Commented 七月 09, 2012 at 8:57 GMT-7

I have a damaged 60gb ide drive that I'm trying to recover data from. Ideally I would want some software that could clone the current drive and copy it onto a new drive which is bigger than the old one. A program that I could run from windows would also be excellent.

Many thanks,

Joel Spencer

⟐ Answered 八月 20, 2025 at 5:11 GMT-7

I have tried pressing the Restart button (PMU). I have also tried starting and holding down the apple, option P and R buttons and waiting for two chimes (tip from the PowerBook manual). Same result.

I have tried to start up with the PRAM battery removed (and Airport Card removed). I have also removed and reseated the processor.

The machine does seem to be making some sound (whirring of some sort can be heard).

Can anyone think of a particular failure which would give this result?

Pismo 400MHz, 512 MB Ram, OS X 10.3.9

UPDATE:This is a follow on to my question (Pismo will,not start).

I thought that I had got to the bottom of the problem (hard drive failure)but now something has happened to open it up all over again.

I have tried swapping parts from a second 'spares' machine. I have tried to use the hard drive from this but I have been getting the same result as before. When I took the hard drive from the original machine and put it into the spare, it fired up first time!

Any thoughts on what is stopping the first machine from firing up properly?

Anyone?!

⟐ Commented 三月 02, 2025 at 19:24 GMT-7

• Onset of the problem was instantaneous and occurred while I was simply looking at the display, without touching the computer.

• The display shows normal and distorted colors at the same time: in some places bright green exchanged for black, purple for white, etc. Color positions don't change unless a window is opened or the window/menu arrangement changes.

• Windows are continually surrounded by "splash rings," similar to what you see when you open a widget in Dashboard, but frozen in one state.

• Strangely, I can sometimes see the (color-distorted) contents of one window showing through the background of another window that's in front of it, even though those same contents cannot be seen while observing through Screen Sharing.

• Faint "dancing" horizontal lines are barely noticeable in the brighter parts of the display.

• Component colors seem to have their rasters displaced relative to one another, like a color comic strip that was not registered properly when printed.

Screen Image

Note that some text was visually edited out for privacy.

Other observations

• Windows, menus, and backgrounds seen through Screen Sharing are all perfectly normal.

• I have not yet tried an external monitor -- hopefully I'll have one set up today.

Steps taken so far

• Reset PRAM -- no change.

• Reset PMU/NVRAM -- no change.

• Booted from separate system on external drive (to detect possible corrupt system color table or other system software problem) -- no change.

• Shined light through Apple logo with the internal backlight lamp turned off. I noticed same color distortion problem (so it seems that the backlight is not the problem).

Suspicions

Having read other trouble reports here related to displays, I suspect that the display cable is the most likely problem, though I am concerned that the problem might actually be with the logic board or other circuitry that drives the display.

Finally, my questions...

• Should I replace the display cable?

• If not, what else should I do, and why?

• If so, what tips might you offer for best success?

Thank you for your time, interest, and help in solving this problem!!

⟐ Answered 七月 28, 2011 at 6:32 GMT-7

We swapped our batteries and mine began to charge once it was placed in my friend's Pismo. I tried to boot with his battery… nada!!

We swapped our chargers, both yo-yo shaped and, again, nada. His Pismo will charge, but mine won't.

We tried the PRAM removal, the PM reset and… nothing happened.

I have removed the audio card and replaced it with the spare one i bought several years ago but still can't get any sign of the battery charging or the Pismo starting up.

I DO have the original processor -G3/400- that I kept when I upgraded to the 500, but I don't know if a bad processor can prevent the battery from charging, so I guess that I'll wait for your response before proceeding.

Thanks in advance!!

⟐ Commented 五月 13, 2025 at 3:01 GMT-7

⟐ Commented 八月 04, 2015 at 15:59 GMT-7

I insert the only install disk I have which is actually for my MacBook Pro (this could be the problem-I don't have the original one as this is a second hand lap top) and hold down "option" as it starts up and this is the screen that greets me:

What am I doing wrong? Did I need to replace the hard drive? Do I need a different os install disk?

It should also be noted that it's a very old laptop (I think circa 2004) so I have also been wondering if perhaps the dvd drive is faulty or can't read the disk that the os install is on.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

⟐ Answer accepted 六月 19, 2015 at 4:18 GMT-7

Thanks, rdklinc. On your advice, I connected an external monitor. No signal. The CD was inserted AFTER the problem started (I thought maybe the CD had a system on it, and maybe could boot from that if the hard drive was bad), so I'm pretty sure the problem is not the CD. This machine has only a single 512K bank or RAM. I just tried re-seating it, and that didn't change anything.

The screen is completely black the whole time. Same results with and without the battery. Just tried the flashlight trick, and I'm not seeing any faint image. Same results holding the option key down while booting.

You speak of resetting the both PMU and the PRAM. What I have done is remove power and battery and hold (5 seconds) the power key then release. I've also done the shift-option-command-start press and release, and wait five seconds. I think either or both of these will reset the PMU. I've also pressed start and then (quickly) held down option-command-P-R. I'm not sure that is working, because I get only one "bong" tone, and I think it should give me at least two.

What seems so strange is that the caps lock light will not come on. Does that mean the PMU is not running? The little white light on the screen latch button does light as soon as the "on" button is pressed, but the caps lock light will not respond at all. Sure do hope this is not a video chip/logic board issue--logic boards are very expensive, I see.

Thanks so much for your help.

⟐ Answered 一月 07, 2025 at 9:50 GMT-7

⟐ Commented 三月 25, 2020 at 19:58 GMT-7

Thank you for all your time, and I look forward to any replies to this post!

⟐ Answer accepted 十月 26, 2013 at 3:43 GMT-7

I have tried to use a (new) OS X 10.4 install disk and only get the same results. However when holding down the option key at start up, I get a blue screen with an icon of the hard drive and the install disk and both icons have a small x on them, what does that mean? When using the hardware test disk, only the hard drive icon has the x.

Where do I start looking for the problem for this mac? Hard drive?

⟐ Commented 十月 18, 2022 at 14:29 GMT-7

I have a PB here with a P key not working. I've replaced the scissor mechanism but the problem is that the springy rubber nipple is damaged. When I press on the contact underneath, it does type Ps with apparent contentment.

I found a source at http://www.irithm.com/Mac.key.replacemen...

with pretty good instructions, but, while they can provide the nipple, they don't say how to install it. It appears to be glued onto the keyboard base. (ifixit only sells complete keyboards.)

Any suggestions?

⟐ Answer edited 八月 06, 2020 at 3:17 GMT-7

my beloved PowerBook Titanium does not want to power up. Battery is ok as well as power supply. Any idea?

⟐ Commented 六月 25, 2018 at 16:08 GMT-7

Have done the following:

1. Disconnect, test peripheral devices and network cables. Made no difference.

2. Perform a Safe Boot. Would not perform a safe boot.

3. Reset the NVRAM/PRAM. Made no difference.

4. Start from your Mac OS X Install disc; use Disk Utility. Won't do it.

5. Check your cables and power source. Made no difference.

6. Remove third-party RAM and internal hardware. Made no difference.

7. Perform an Archive and Install installation of Mac OS X. Can't do it.

8. Perform an Erase and Install installation of Mac OS X as a last resort. Not willing to do that, because I really need a couple of things that are sitting on my hard drive.

Is there anything I can do to retrieve the information that I need from the hard drive?

⟐ Answer accepted 三月 20, 2014 at 3:35 GMT-7