(solved) old ibook G4 shuts down when moved / tapped- what could be wrong ?

hello all
I was given an old ibook G4, with a borken hard drive.
since it would boot from a firewire drive on mac os X 10.4 ppc, I decided to change the hard drive, which i had never doe for a laptop. I had a very similar 40 Gig toshiba IDE drive from an old laptop, opened the ibook and changed the drive.

everything works, the mac boots fine, sound, video etc, yet I realised that it had one rather serious issue. It shuts down when moved / tapped, even very lightly, and this is problematic for a laptop. I was considering buying an airport extreme for it, but now I'm afraid this might not be mendable, nd i'm reconsidering.

what could be wrong ? is there somekind of shock sensor that could have been damaged ? I put back all the screws, and only changed the drive and proceeded cautiously, but maybe something was damaged- what could be causing this, is there a specific area I should focus on ?

thanks in advance for your help

ben

thanks for your help

i improved things a little, it now only shutsdown if it's slapped on the side, hence useable as such. It can be placed on a table, moved around etc

after looking at the links, i added padding in different areas which seems to help with whatever is wrong. typing from it now.

ordered a second hand airport extreme for it.

sorry for the off topic slide, but would it be worth it installing 10.5 on this 1.07 GHz ibook G4 ppc or would this hinder performance more than anything else ?

I read this thread
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/374283/

yet this machine has less ram than most, at 768mb

thanks again

ben

great, thanks, yes it sounds like it's the same machine.
The original drive was a 30gig drive, the 40 gig which now replaces it comes from an old toshiba laptop.

I wasn't planning on using time machine for this computer anyway, since it's a secondary computer- i'll do the install today, I might just try it out on firewire drive first before erasing the current hard drive.

thanks again

hello all,

just a little update, all is going find with the ibook- the shutting down can be moderated by playing with shell, the less pressure there is, the better. it get pretty stable.
I just realised today that I'd left out 2 tork screws onto the left side of the original apple drive, wondering if this is related to drive stability and the shutting down from plastic shell-- are they important ? I'm not very eager to dissassemble it again

thanks
ben

bump.

do the two screw on the side of the HDD play an important role in hard drive stability ? i don't remember how it looked when I opened it and what physical purpose they might be playing.

if the do, I might have to reopen the ibook again, but i'd like to make sure first-

thanks

ben

update- it's fixed. i re-opened the computer, added the screws, and checked all connections, adding tape when necessary.
since the computer was *only* shut down when pressure was applied on the left side, it was probably coming from something loose- adding the two torque screws on the drive (which go into the plastic buffer on the logic board side), and securing everything seems to have done the trick.

i'd looked into the logic board crack and did the soldering thing a while back.

we'll see how it holds

thanks

b

nope, the battery holds roughly 2 hours.
but again, it's fixed. I think it was linked to the tape on the HDD being looser (changed it), the missing screws on the HD's motherboard side and possibly a missing screw.
it only turned off *when tapped* or moved (hence the thread title),even with the power plugged in, and would not turn off on its own, which is quite different from the issue others had been having, with the computer turning of on its own.
i could turn it off by pressing down the case near the HDD as well.

b