Help! Screen appears to be broken!

[jdoran]

Hello,
When I took my powerbook out of my bag this morning I found the screen to be completely out of control. The image was being distorted with vertical and horizontal lines that would shift around a bit and even change colors a bit (mostly shades of green but also some blues and purples) I am now home and have the notebook plugged into an external monitor. The external is fine, everything is as it should be however the display on the notebook still has the lines. Obviously it seems as thought the screen is broken however I would like to learn to what extend and if there is anything that can be done short of replacing the screen. In case it is relevant I did not handle the computer rough today, it was not dropped or subjected to extreme temperatures. Also I have a 12 inch g4 powerbook running the latest mac osx and nothing was done to/ installed on my computer prior to this problem. I appreciate any help provided! Justin.

 

[JediMeister]

This might sound odd, but any chance you synced an iPhone or iPod recently?

 

[jdoran]

no, unfortunately my ipod died on my about a month ago (i know, i know my apple hardware is desperately old : ) I did however yank out a whole bunch of cords from the powerbook as I ran off to school. This includes: power-cord, mini-vga adapter, ethernet cord, USB hub connecting a webcam (that was turnded off) a Bluetooth receiver that was paired to my mouse and a wacom bamboo tablet

 

[ZMacintosh]

sounds like maybe when you took out the vga adapter it was still sending signal to the display or back to the powerbooks video ports, so something got scrambled it appears.

have you done a restart of the system atleast? to see if it would clear itself?
other wise try following these steps:

PowerBook G4 (12-inch)
PowerBook G4 (12-inch DVI)
PowerBook G4 (12-inch 1.33GHz)
PowerBook G4 (12-inch 1.5GHz)

1. If the computer is on, turn it off.
2. Reset the power manager by simultaneously pressing and then releasing Shift-Control-Option-Power on the keyboard. Do not press the fn (Function) key while using this combination of keystrokes.
3. Wait 5 seconds.
4. Press the Power button to restart the computer.

link: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1431

 

[jdoran]

Thanks for the suggestion ZMacintosh, unfortunately after several attempts at restarting the computer as well as resetting the PMU the problem persists. I'm going to continue to search through Apple's trouble shooting guide however if anyone else has any ideas I would love to hear them!

 

[ZMacintosh]

Not a problem.

Hm....have you tried replugging in all the cables you detached before and starting from there?

maybe check the video port on the powerbook to see it wasnt damaged...


goodluck