G4 iBook display broken... kind of

[RockCrate]

A friend's G4 iBook display appears to be broken. When I turn the machine on I hear the startup chime, and the hard disk working, but nothing comes up on the display. This seems like a common problem for older iBooks from what I have researched, the display just fails after a while. The only reason I think there still may be a chance for it is when I hook it up to my iMac and boot up the iBook in target disk mode, the firewire symbol screensaver pops up on the iBook's display. So it appears that the display works in that situation. Has anyone seen something like this? Is there anything I can do, short of replacing the screen? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

RC

 

[Thomasthetug]

Maybe if you have a mini vga to vga (i believe they came with the ibook(older version of mini dvi)) you can plug it into an external monitor and check to see if it's just the monitor.

 

[Sun Baked]

Almost sounds like a turn up the brightness ...

If the display works when the PRAM isn't accessed for the brightness, the backlight may be off.

Or the resolution may be set to a bad, non-working one.

Can always see if it works in single user mode, and then go and delete the display preference.

 

[applgeek]

This sounds more like a software issue. If it was a hardware issue (if you had to replace the screen) It would Not work in target disk mode. You should try reinstalling OS X from a disc. This should enable the screen to work, unless there is an EFI problem with the motherboard.