Friend's iBook won't Turn On

[ryan42]

I am spending after christmas with the relatives in Houston, and one of thier friends has an iBook that isn't powering. I am leaving here New Year's Eve... so help by then will be appreciated. It is an iBook G3. 700 Mhz and 384 MB RAM. When you hit power nothing happens. If you have the charger connected and hit the ctrl option command shift power combination to reset the PMU, it turns green, then back orange, but it will not turn on. The laptop also appears to not be charging the battery. No lights light up when you hit the button on the battery.

Anyway, help me if you can!

~/Ryan

 

[varmit]

Will it turn on if you take the battery out and just have it plugged in? Its probably a bad battery. Also, does it fall in the Logic Board replacement problem for the iBooks, see apples main page, at the bottom. Does it chime? If it does chime, have you reset the PRAM? Maybe do Target mode if you have a firewire cable and another computer to get the information off?

 

[ryan42]

It's specific serial number does not fall under the replacment, but it is a 16 VRAM model. It will not turn on with the battery unplugged. The battery never gets charged, you can tell because no matter how long it's been plugged in the button never makes any of the lights come on. The adapter turns orange for a while after you plug it in but after maybe 30 mintues it turns green.

 

[varmit]

Well, orange means charging and green means its just feeding it power because the battery is suppost to be fully charged. I believe the PMU can be reset by a little button on the side of the iBook. At least it was that way for my 600. Its a small one, paper clip size hole, where you need to push and hold to actually reset the PMU. It should be right next to the video output that is next to the USB ports on the side.

 

[ryan42]

The iBook doesn't have an actual PMU reset button. It only has a key combination. The battery also seems like it doesn't really get the charge, because the lights never come on when you press the button. Does an AC Adaptor seem like a possibile problem?

 

[applemacdude]

Call apple and insist for a replacement....lie a little lol jk ;-)

 

[ryan42]

Forgot to mention. It's outta warranty.

 

[sgarringer]

Forgot to mention. It's outta warranty.

Any luck yet? Mine did the same thing... except that my battery will fully charge. I push power and get aboslutely nothing. Mine _is_ covered by the logic board replacement program, Apple insisted this wasnt why it broke, I insisted it was. They finally agreed to send me the packaging but then told me the logic board replacement program had ended. However, I got the packing in the mail yesterday. I really have no idea whats going on, I'm a bit hesitant to send it it though...

 

[Mord]

it's been extended so don't worry.

(check mac bytes)

 

[ryan42]

Well, thier iBook isn't covered by logic board replacment, but I told them to take it in anyway, and see if they could get them to "check it out" free of charge and see if using a diffrent power adaptor would do the trick. It seems like the power adaptor may be it. It's taking keyboard input since otherwise command-option-shift-control-power wouldn't do the thing it's doing to the power adaptor LED. Thanks for all of the suggestions, but I'm done with this one. I'm going home today at one in the afternoon anyway, and I'm not dealing with taking this with me just to stare at it and poke it for a week just to send it back still borked anyway.