ibook g3 has gone dark

[tangerineyum]

I have an old g3 ibook that has been in the care of my gf for about a year now since i bought a newer g4 ibook. She started complaining that if she tilts the screen at a certain angle the screen goes black , but that you can faintly see what on the screen. And that if she closes the lid, and reopens that the screen come back on.

well its finally died, and no amount of screen closing revives it. i didnt know what was wrong with it until she said that the light on the apple on the back of the ibook no longer lights up either.

so after some research, im thinking the lcd backlight is busted, or the backlight inverter is busted. how hard are these to replace and how can i confirm for sure that this is the problem? my laptop has been repaired a couple of times and there is a lot of wear and tear on the screws and the casing around the screws. i dont know how much more abuse the case can take before the area around the screw completely crack.

so what do you think i should do folks ?

 

[Me1000]

never seen the backlight on one, but im guessing when its tilted the ribbon (power) is broken somewhere and it doesnt get power...

 

[emac82]

Seeing as it is a G3 I wouldn't want to put a lot of money into it. Buy a refurb MacBook

 

[tangerineyum]

well yea i think a new machine is the way to go, but we are some poor college students. I think im flirting with the idea of not fixing it at all and just selling it on here for parts. It's got a relatively new hard drive, logic board and combo drive. But it was the first mac i got on my own and i dunno how soon we could get her a macbook. I dunno, i have some thinking to do.

 

[iperson]

I have an iBook G3 that's going dark as well. I'm trying to wait for the big news on the imacs before I replace it completely. I'm wondering about hooking up an external monitor to the VGA port plug I have and what size of monitor I can get. Are there limits? I can get good deals on big monitors here.

I tried to find out on the apple help site but there wasn't much info.

 

[Cognomen]

I had a similar problem with my G3 500mhz iBook. The cure was to take it to my local Apple repair centre (I'm lucky, it's only 10 miles away) and they repaired it for £44.70 which included £3.04 for the switch that had failed.

Can't say if your problem is exactly the same but it might be worth having it investigated as mine is now running Tiger (granted that even with 640mb RAM it's not the speediest) and is useful to carry around instead of my 20" iMac!

Worth repairing and keeping I reckon, if only to surf and write notes.

 

[scttwtkns]

ibook g3

My mom's ibook g3 500 had the same problem & Apple fixed it at no charge.

About 2.5 years ago, (even though the computer was way past the warranty) i brought the ibook G3 500 Mhz to my local Apple Store. The Genius looked it over, and said that they would cover it. The ibook was mailed back to me about a week later, working as good as new, and we were not charged a dime.

 

[SuperCompu2]

My mom's ibook g3 500 had the same problem & Apple fixed it at no charge.

About 2.5 years ago, (even though the computer was way past the warranty) i brought the ibook G3 500 Mhz to my local Apple Store. The Genius looked it over, and said that they would cover it. The ibook was mailed back to me about a week later, working as good as new, and we were not charged a dime.

Well, for a while they had a recall on the G3 iBooks because of a Logic Board issue, and the service fees incurred on the iBook was free; regardless of AppleCare or not.

 

[scttwtkns]

Well, for a while they had a recall on the G3 iBooks because of a Logic Board issue, and the service fees incurred on the iBook was free; regardless of AppleCare or not.

If an apple store isn't too far away, it's worth a shot still.