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iBook G4 - Dropped 2 years ago, shattered the graphics card. 800 dollars to repair!?

H

Hamsterz

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 22, 2008
58
0
So, we have a iBook G4 that was dropped on concrete (walking to the card :eek:) and when we sent it in, even though we had apple care, they said it would cost 800 dollars to repair! I was wondering if there was any DIY solution to this.

Im pretty sure now it has a broken harddrive, and tech support was wrong because they said that we had a broken backplate, but I can get a picture when booting from CD.

This will cost 45 bucks to repair, now I'm wondering how much ram is the max?
 
In terms of DIY solutions, the most cost expedient, if you really want to continue using an iBook G4, would be to buy a used one ($300-400) and sell the functional parts off yours to recoup costs.

But like everyone else, I'd suggest that you just upgrade to Intel. Or for that matter, if cost is prohibitive and OS X is less so, just get a netbook. That's an old computer... I was hanging onto mine and I ditched mine a year ago.
 
Apple Care never claims to cover accidental damage/abuse ... and Apple's charges for repair never are cheap.

If all you did was shatter the LCD screens you might try 3rd parties like

http://www.dttservice.com/ibookg4.html

which would replace the screen and/or logic board for less. Like $250.

For DIY, you might be able to cut it in half ... though if you dropped the machine and broke the display, you might need more than just the display, since the frame inside the display tends to break as well.
 
I already have a white macbook - I was just wondering if there was any easy way to repair it. And I meant car, not card :)
 
To clear everything up, I already HAVE a white macbook :)

I just wanna get this working.

I have good news. Its not the graphics card, its the back plate of the display. It was working for a few minutes today, without a display, but it stopped working :(
 
It works fine.

One catch.

Theres no hard drive. Someone must have stolen it while it was in my dad's lab. It can only boot from an install CD, and theres nothing to install. I'm wondering if I can install Mac OS X on a portable harddrive, and boot from that? Thats why it was only booting occasionally.
 
Hamsterz said:
It works fine.

One catch.

Theres no hard drive. Someone must have stolen it while it was in my dad's lab. It can only boot from an install CD, and theres nothing to install. I'm wondering if I can install Mac OS X on a portable harddrive, and boot from that? Thats why it was only booting occasionally.
Click to expand...

Sounds more like your hard drive failed. It takes about an hour to remove the hard drive. :)

What is all damaged? Is the case in bad shape or is it just the LCD?
 
I highly doubt somebody stole the HDD. It takes quite some time to disassemble the G4 iBook far enough to get to the HDD, and quite a bit of tiny-tiny screw drivers. Sounds more like a dead HDD to me.
 
Ah, I think I found the problem.

Worse then just a normal fix.

The hardrive connector was destroyed.

Can boot from an external hard drive? If I cleaned it off and installed Tiger?
 
Hamsterz said:
Ah, I think I found the problem.

Worse then just a normal fix.

The hardrive connector was destroyed.

Can boot from an external hard drive? If I cleaned it off and installed Tiger?
Click to expand...

As long as it's a firewire hard drive, then yes you can install Tiger onto that external hard drive and run it like that.
 
It doesn't notice its there. It just goes to the install CD apple stuck in it, and the install CD doesn't notice its there, either.
 
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