iBook: Harddrive and Touchpad do not work

[thingsis]

Hi,

I just got a broken ibook. after starting it up for the first time the internal harddrive and the touchpad dont work. when i attach an external usb mouse i can boot from cd. is this a logic board failure and i am out of luck or could it just be a loose connection or something else repairable?

thanks,
thingsis

[OrangeSVTguy]

What kind of iBook? G3 or G4? The G3s had the hdd and optical cables on the same ribbon cable/connection. The G4s had different cables for the optical drive and hard drive. I've heard of G4s where the logic board would go out and you can't boot from the internal hard drive.

Sounds like loose connections to me. Does the track pad button still click and work? You can use the usb mouse to move the cursor and use the button on the trackpad to click. The previous owner could have taken it apart to try and fix it and didn't reconnect all the cables.