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foothead

macrumors regular
Original poster
Apr 15, 2009
134
0
in a house
I brought my iBook G4 to school today, and it sent the whole time in my backpack. When I got home, I turned it on, and it started booting up, but when the screen came on, it was only gray. I opened it, and saw that the lcd was still plugged in, so what could this be? Can the 32mb vram iBooks get the graphics problem? I've tried squeezing as hard as I could to see if it would come on, but nothing. Also, the brightness controls aren't working.
 
update
I took it apart completely, turned it on, and the video worked. I then put it back together and it didn't work again.
?
 
update
I took it apart completely, turned it on, and the video worked. I then put it back together and it didn't work again.
?

It could be a variety of things, but that makes it sound like there's a loose or bad cable somewhere in the setup....

As for iBook G4's having GPU failures... there were definitely some logic board failures on them:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=3249364

There are some logic board / GPU failures on any computer. Even if Apple did fix the problem with the G3 iBook, then that still doesn't mean the chance of a video failure on your G4 iBook became 0%, right?
 
Okay. I put it back together without the metal sheilding and it works now. All the cables were tight, so that's not the problem. I'm thinking there was a short with the shielding.
BTW where is the GPU on a G4?
 
There's usually a little chip on the bottom where the solder "microscopically" cracks causing the G4 iBook to not start or have no video. I've had plenty of these G4 iBooks already.

Here's a good site with pictures showing that little chip. Good luck.
Click Here.

Here's a quick image, courtesy of MacMods.
file.php


added:
OH and when you said that you tried smashing it, you probably bent the heat shield just enough and it shorted something out causing it to not to boot with it installed. You should be fine without it anyways but your internal heat temps will increase though. I've ran mine without them before without any problems, when I cleared the acryilc on mine so the bottom case would be transparent.
 
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