Hi guys,
I have a iBook G3 800 14.1" from Nov 2002. I don't have Applecare.
About a month ago I had my first problem with it. Basically, the HDD seemed to fail intermitently - it would just 'stop' for 5 minutes or so, OSX would display the 'no free disk space' window (when I had over 13GB of space on it). This got worse and worse until eventually it would work for 1 minute, break for 10, then work again for another minute or two. Obviously this was not a productive working experience. I restarted the laptop and it would just get stuck on the 'spinnning starburst' grey apple startup screen. I left it for 2 hours and it had failed to startup.
I thought that I would need to replace the HDD, but I thought that I'd try and reinstall OSX on it. So I whacked the disk in, did an archive and install, and bingo! It worked perfectly. Great.. I thought. All my documents, apps etc worked perfectly. Thought it was just a busted install of OSX and did my usual iBook stuff.
The following weekend, the same issue occured. Apart from this time, it'd lockup completely instead of presenting me the disk free error (which I assume is being triggered because IDE I/O is failing), the display totally locked but I believe the caps lock keys worked ok, which suggested at least some of it was working, and just the display had locked up.
I did another reinstall, and it worked for around 3 days, after this, it would start kernel panicing at startup and sometimes totally locking up at the apple grey screen. I did, however, check the SMART (diagonstic) status of the HDD drive while it was working and it was in good condition with no warnings.
I also hooked it up to my network and wrote a quick shell script to copy around 650MB of files off the network, checksum them, delete them and repeat overnight. Every single file passed this test, and a hell of a lot of data was copied. This certainly wasn't a HDD issue, as it would def. break at a hard workout for 12 hours, if there was a fault with it.
The only thing I can think of is this is some sort of wacko logic board issue here. I removed my 512MB of RAM and airport card and I still had the same issue, and I tried a few versions of OSX (10.2, 10.3, 10.3.6, 10.3.7).
I also realised one important thing: only on a weekend (when every breakage occured) do I move the laptop around. The rest of the time it's sitting on a shelf on my desk with a wirelss keyboard and mouse hooked into it. This would explain why it only locks up at the weekend, because that's the only time I'd be applying pressure onto the logic board (by moving it around).
To me, it all sounds a bit iffy but I booked in a logic board replacement anyway, and they are picking it up tommorrow.
Basically, what are the ramifications if they get it and it works fine (which is quite possible, since my issues are quite intermittent)? Will they bother fixing it?
I really don't want to have to buy a new laptop as that G3 was absolutely perfect for me, and I don't have the cash to replace it with, especially when you figure in I'd have to buy new RAM aswell, plus I much prefer the 14" screen - anything smaller just seems toyish to me.
I have a iBook G3 800 14.1" from Nov 2002. I don't have Applecare.
About a month ago I had my first problem with it. Basically, the HDD seemed to fail intermitently - it would just 'stop' for 5 minutes or so, OSX would display the 'no free disk space' window (when I had over 13GB of space on it). This got worse and worse until eventually it would work for 1 minute, break for 10, then work again for another minute or two. Obviously this was not a productive working experience. I restarted the laptop and it would just get stuck on the 'spinnning starburst' grey apple startup screen. I left it for 2 hours and it had failed to startup.
I thought that I would need to replace the HDD, but I thought that I'd try and reinstall OSX on it. So I whacked the disk in, did an archive and install, and bingo! It worked perfectly. Great.. I thought. All my documents, apps etc worked perfectly. Thought it was just a busted install of OSX and did my usual iBook stuff.
The following weekend, the same issue occured. Apart from this time, it'd lockup completely instead of presenting me the disk free error (which I assume is being triggered because IDE I/O is failing), the display totally locked but I believe the caps lock keys worked ok, which suggested at least some of it was working, and just the display had locked up.
I did another reinstall, and it worked for around 3 days, after this, it would start kernel panicing at startup and sometimes totally locking up at the apple grey screen. I did, however, check the SMART (diagonstic) status of the HDD drive while it was working and it was in good condition with no warnings.
I also hooked it up to my network and wrote a quick shell script to copy around 650MB of files off the network, checksum them, delete them and repeat overnight. Every single file passed this test, and a hell of a lot of data was copied. This certainly wasn't a HDD issue, as it would def. break at a hard workout for 12 hours, if there was a fault with it.
The only thing I can think of is this is some sort of wacko logic board issue here. I removed my 512MB of RAM and airport card and I still had the same issue, and I tried a few versions of OSX (10.2, 10.3, 10.3.6, 10.3.7).
I also realised one important thing: only on a weekend (when every breakage occured) do I move the laptop around. The rest of the time it's sitting on a shelf on my desk with a wirelss keyboard and mouse hooked into it. This would explain why it only locks up at the weekend, because that's the only time I'd be applying pressure onto the logic board (by moving it around).
To me, it all sounds a bit iffy but I booked in a logic board replacement anyway, and they are picking it up tommorrow.
Basically, what are the ramifications if they get it and it works fine (which is quite possible, since my issues are quite intermittent)? Will they bother fixing it?
I really don't want to have to buy a new laptop as that G3 was absolutely perfect for me, and I don't have the cash to replace it with, especially when you figure in I'd have to buy new RAM aswell, plus I much prefer the 14" screen - anything smaller just seems toyish to me.