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donuttakedonuts

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 9, 2009
207
0
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Basically: my iBook g4 will not charge its battery or run off the power adapter. Ive crosschecked the adapter against other laptops and another power supply. Problem is in the ibook. psu light goes on orange, Ibook battery menu registers psu is there but says it is not charging the battery. iBook will *not* run without battery in. resetting pmu does nothing, and the power dies in single-user mode too, so its probably not a high level os problem. any ideas?
 

Strimkind

macrumors member
Jul 16, 2009
47
0
It is either a DC-IN problem or a more serious logic board issue. To repair either is a long process and the parts aren't cheap. For the effort, I think it would be more economical to replace the unit itself.
 

donuttakedonuts

macrumors regular
Original poster
Aug 9, 2009
207
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after removing the bottom case of the laptop, problem was found - a faulty dc in board. 30 minutes, $8 part. didnt realize that that was expensive for someone who uses a $1500+ computer.
 

ecschwarz

macrumors 65816
Jun 28, 2010
1,433
354
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

after removing the bottom case of the laptop, problem was found - a faulty dc in board. 30 minutes, $8 part. didnt realize that that was expensive for someone who uses a $1500+ computer.

Even though I've moved on from iBooks as my main computer, I have to say, if you get familiar with the innards, replacement parts can be had relatively cheap…mine had the reed switch cable (which carries the backlight power among other things) fail, so I managed to get a replacement for $20…not bad to keep a 3-year-old laptop running as a portable…

Best of luck with your G4 and good job with the diagnosis!
 

Strimkind

macrumors member
Jul 16, 2009
47
0
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

after removing the bottom case of the laptop, problem was found - a faulty dc in board. 30 minutes, $8 part. didnt realize that that was expensive for someone who uses a $1500+ computer.

My bad. I thought the DC-IN parts were expensive and/or hard to come by. Its good that everything is working again.
 
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