powerbook g3 pismo wont start up

[rzack]

I recently bought two powerbook pismo g3 400mhzs.They both have 10gb hard drives. The ebay seller said one of them didn't work but wasn't specific about what was wrong with it. when i plugged in the broken pismo it wouldn't start up and smoke started coming out through the vent where the hard drive is. I opened it up and found that the hard drive ribbon was what was smoking. I took out the hard drive and the ribbon but it still wouldn't start up. I tried resetting the pram, taking out the pram battery, and reseating the processor card but nothing worked.

[techound1]

Cool. Well, okay, that's not really helpful.

You said you took the HD out but it still won't boot. Where are you booting from? Does the machine have RAM in it?

[rzack]

It has ram and i wasn't expecting it to start up from anything i was trying to get it to chime and it would ask for a startup disk and if i get it to work i'll have to buy a new ribbon for it

[rzack]

I switched the ram with the other pismo and disconnected the pram battery and it started up no problem. I assume one of the cards was bad. The hard drive ribbon stopped smoking to.

[techound1]

Nice. Now you just have to figure out which of the two was causing the problem.