So my neighbor gave me this powerbook. Its a 12", aluminum G4, 1.5GHz, 1.25GB of RAM, and the stock 80GB HDD. I took it without question, free apple, whos gonna complain?
I checked the battery button, three lights. Tried to power it up and nothing. Not even a whir of a fan. So I plug it in, the light goes green on the charger port, and I power it up. boots up, and tells me the time is set before 2001.
Problem A: PowerBook is not getting power from the battery
I check that the book is charging, and sure enough, it was at like 36% and charging. Went all the way up to like 80 before
Problem B: Hard Drive not functioning properly
The thing shut off without warning. I immediately power it back up, just to get the grey screen and no apple symbol. Sat there for a solid 10 minutes before I shut it back down. Tried booting it into single user mode, everything. Then I booted up the OSX disc that she gave me, and it booted into the disc!
I tried repairing the drive, no dice. It doesnt show up in the devices! Not even a bit, only the CD drive showed up.
So I turn it off and give up after a while. Power it back on later and it starts loading OSX! So I shut it off quickly, power it up and boot into the CD, and load the disk utility. It shows the drive! So I try repairing, and it starts and stops after a little bit saying cannot unmount the drive. Tried verifying it, and nothing. Reboot it, and it wont load OSX. Grey screen again
So I figure it like this. the HDD is toast after the years of use, and so is the battery.
I've got a 320GB HDD on its way. I ordered a battery as well.
However I hear from my neighbor that the battery was replaced like 2 weeks ago. Apparently she sent it in for a replacement since it used to have one of the recall batteries in it! So this battery is supposedly new from Apple themselves.
So do I have an issue of the motherboard not receiving the battery power? Is it still likely the battery is just crap and apple sent a bad battery?
Or is it something on the mainboard?
Any advice or input is helpful. I've tried resetting the PRAM with no help, it doesn't do anything.
I checked the battery button, three lights. Tried to power it up and nothing. Not even a whir of a fan. So I plug it in, the light goes green on the charger port, and I power it up. boots up, and tells me the time is set before 2001.
Problem A: PowerBook is not getting power from the battery
I check that the book is charging, and sure enough, it was at like 36% and charging. Went all the way up to like 80 before
Problem B: Hard Drive not functioning properly
The thing shut off without warning. I immediately power it back up, just to get the grey screen and no apple symbol. Sat there for a solid 10 minutes before I shut it back down. Tried booting it into single user mode, everything. Then I booted up the OSX disc that she gave me, and it booted into the disc!
I tried repairing the drive, no dice. It doesnt show up in the devices! Not even a bit, only the CD drive showed up.
So I turn it off and give up after a while. Power it back on later and it starts loading OSX! So I shut it off quickly, power it up and boot into the CD, and load the disk utility. It shows the drive! So I try repairing, and it starts and stops after a little bit saying cannot unmount the drive. Tried verifying it, and nothing. Reboot it, and it wont load OSX. Grey screen again
So I figure it like this. the HDD is toast after the years of use, and so is the battery.
I've got a 320GB HDD on its way. I ordered a battery as well.
However I hear from my neighbor that the battery was replaced like 2 weeks ago. Apparently she sent it in for a replacement since it used to have one of the recall batteries in it! So this battery is supposedly new from Apple themselves.
So do I have an issue of the motherboard not receiving the battery power? Is it still likely the battery is just crap and apple sent a bad battery?
Or is it something on the mainboard?
Any advice or input is helpful. I've tried resetting the PRAM with no help, it doesn't do anything.
