Black horizontal line appeared across my G4 screen

[Moreorless]

I use a new MacBook Pro 13" every day but started up my trusty old Powerbook G4 this morning to find an old email address and a black line appeared across the screen about a third of the way down. What causes this?

Restarted but didn't go away. The Powerbook is now about 8 years old, tediously slow but has always been amazingly reliable. Does this tell me the end is nigh?

Can't seem to find any threads that relate to this problem.

 

[MrCheeto]

At what point in the boot process does this line appear?

 

[Moreorless]

As soon as the grey screen appears with the apple logo!

It almost looks as if it's supposed to be there as it neatly partitions the screen. Of course it shouldn't.

 

[Nancy Edwell]

Black line across the screen - ibook G4

I have the exact problem - did you manage to fix yours and if so what was it?

Would really appreciate any hints.

thanks

nancy

 

[sjinsjca]

The bad news is, this sounds like a classical hardware issue with the LCD or its driver. You've lost a line of pixels. They aren't coming back. The problem might not necessarily worsen, but it could.

The possibly* good news is, Apple has had* a very reasonable flat fee repair policy for these wonderful old machines. They'll replace whatever needs replacing (except battery & charger, IIRC) for something like $320 (again IIRC). It'll be returned to you fully freshened.

*My weasel-words relate to the possibility that since we rebuilt my wife's and son's G4 laptops last year, Apple announced some sort of sunset for support of older models. Entirely understandable and not unusual, but still sad to see.

Even if the screen dies utterly, you can probably still use your machine with an external monitor.

Good luck...