iBook won't boot until Reset is pressed

[danny_w]

I just bought a g3/500 iBook, and it seems to be working fine except for one thing. Most of the time when I go to turn it on, pressing the Power button won't do anything - no disk noise, no chime, nothing. This is on either battery or ac power. If I press the Reset button, it will then start up normally with no problems. I have also noticed that that sometimes if I shut off the iBook and then plug in the ac adapter, it won't start charging until I press the Reset button, and then it charges normally. I am getting between 1 and 1 1/2 hours on the battery which seems good to me for an old laptop and battery. Does anybody have any ideas on what this could be? I have tried zapping the PRAM and resetting the PMU as described by Apple, and also repairing permissions, all to no avail. It gets very aggravating having to reset all the time. I don't see how it could be anything major, since everything else seems to work just fine.

 

[CanadaRAM]

I just bought a g3/500 iBook, and it seems to be working fine except for one thing. Most of the time when I go to turn it on, pressing the Power button won't do anything - no disk noise, no chime, nothing. This is on either battery or ac power. If I press the Reset button, it will then start up normally with no problems. I have also noticed that that sometimes if I shut off the iBook and then plug in the ac adapter, it won't start charging until I press the Reset button, and then it charges normally. I am getting between 1 and 1 1/2 hours on the battery which seems good to me for an old laptop and battery. Does anybody have any ideas on what this could be? I have tried zapping the PRAM and resetting the PMU as described by Apple, and also repairing permissions, all to no avail. It gets very aggravating having to reset all the time. I don't see how it could be anything major, since everything else seems to work just fine.

You have to hold the power button down for like 6 seconds before it starts... annoying

 

[danny_w]

You have to hold the power button down for like 6 seconds before it starts... annoying

Sorry, I don't get you. Holding the button down for 10, 15, 20 seconds makes no difference. After pressing the reset button on the side, a simple press of the power button brings the iBook to life. I always get the message that the date has been set before some date in 2001, but when I go to check the date and time they are correct (and set to auto) and everything else works normally, including airport, iTunes, Safari, etc. Do you normally have to hold down the power button?

 

[CanadaRAM]

Yeah, you normally have to hold the power buttion down for longer than you'd expect before the machine starts. Can't tell you the number of people who have come to me saying "my laptop's broke" and they were just going |press| rather than |prrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssss|

Sorry it's not a quick fix for your problem.

 

[danny_w]

Yeah, you normally have to hold the power buttion down for longer than you'd expect before the machine starts. Can't tell you the number of people who have come to me saying "my laptop's broke" and they were just going |press| rather than |prrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssss|

Sorry it's not a quick fix for your problem.

The funny thing is that just a simple |press| is all that is needed after I push the reset button.