Powerbook G4 17" HR/DLSD No Charging or Power with Charged Battery

[dbdjre0143]

Oh, sorry to hear about that! - Next steps are more challenging.
I'd look inside the PB if any part is smoked off. Last year I've got a 17" PB with non-functional trackpad and some keys. Replaced the top-case, but only the keyboard was ok after that. Then I detected a tiny thingy on the mainboard that did look oddly "burnt" and broke off after a gentle Uspudger's touch. Maybe you'll find something like that either (hopefully) on the DC-in board or the logic-board, before you start to look for a DC-in-board replacement. Cheers

BTW: did you check the charger on another device?

I didn't remove the logic board, but I took a look at it and the DC board before I started this thread and didn't see anything obvious. I don't know the layout of the board to determine the location of pertinent components, so I didn't bother tearing down far enough to look at the "bottom" side of it.

Do you happen to have another pb to verify the functional state of your 65w charger? If you don’t (I didn’t) a gentle wiggle side by side would produce intermittent connectivity thus lit ring. Anyhow, just trying to ensure it’s not something simple before you start looking at lobos & other internal components. Best of luck.

Good call to both of you on checking to make sure the new charger works. Alas, though, I tried it on my 12" iBook and it does indeed work. Sadly, this third party charger doesn't have a ring to light up, but no biggie on that.

I've done some looking and it looks like I can get the DC-in board for around $11 shipped from PowerbookMedic. Sadly I'm only seeing one logic board available on eBay right now for more than double what I paid for the laptop.

So, I'm wondering how much of the charging/power circuitry is on the DC-in board, and whether you all think there is a chance that it could be the culprit. Also, just in case, if you know of any better source for a logic board, please let me know! I can't justify spending $190 for one. PowerbookMedic lists them for $54.75 but they're out of stock.

Right, I get that.

But having had a HD-DLSD where I ended up using a 45W charger for a little over 6 months before realizing it was 45W and not 65W and then a year or so later having complexing charging problems I can speak to the reality of it.

It won't happen today, tomorrow or possibly even next year but it can ultimately cause some charging component failure. There is stress being placed on the system.

When your 'Book suffered charging component failure, what did you end up having to replace?

 

[eyoungren]

When your 'Book suffered charging component failure, what did you end up having to replace?

Well…I didn't get a chance to replace anything. It ended up dying a fairly violent and destructive death before I could.

The DC In board had been replaced several times, I had several different 65W chargers (all good), a handful of known good batteries that took a charge in my A1013 (that's the 1GHz 17" PB), multiple PMU resets and the PRAM battery was fine.

That left ONE component and that was the battery connector on the logicboard. As near as I can tell, if everything else worked then the connector which I'd never done anything to was not transfering power to or from the battery.

The only other issue could have been the logicboard, which was entirely possible considering I was starting to have issues. However, those could have been easily attributed to a failing hard drive.

 

[dbdjre0143]

Well…I didn't get a chance to replace anything. It ended up dying a fairly violent and destructive death before I could.

Now that sounds like an interesting story...haha.

At any rate, for the going price, I think I'll give the DC-in board a shot. I know my original battery still works. It is even fully charged, at least as full as it ever gets. I also know that my laptop never acted strange before, so I'd hate to think the logic board suffered catastrophic failure like that.

Actually, come to think about it, I had noticed ever since I've had it that it made sounds that were similar to the faint ticking noise I expect from a traditional hard drive, but I had an SSD so found that weird. I always figured I just needed to clean out, or maybe replace a fan, since it would make more noise under load. I never got around to doing that before this happened though. I wonder if it may have been something besides a fan, perhaps something related. Any thoughts on that?

 

[eyoungren]

Now that sounds like an interesting story...haha.

At any rate, for the going price, I think I'll give the DC-in board a shot. I know my original battery still works. It is even fully charged, at least as full as it ever gets. I also know that my laptop never acted strange before, so I'd hate to think the logic board suffered catastrophic failure like that.

Actually, come to think about it, I had noticed ever since I've had it that it made sounds that were similar to the faint ticking noise I expect from a traditional hard drive, but I had an SSD so found that weird. I always figured I just needed to clean out, or maybe replace a fan, since it would make more noise under load. I never got around to doing that before this happened though. I wonder if it may have been something besides a fan, perhaps something related. Any thoughts on that?

DC In board is a pretty easy repair so if you're willing to spend the money it's worth a shot. You can always keep the part for another Mac later on if it's something else.

I don't really have any advice about the noise(s) you heard. I've always had mechanical drives so I wouldn't know what could cause that if it was happening as the hard drive would be making the same sounds.

 

[laptech]

Now that sounds like an interesting story...haha.

At any rate, for the going price, I think I'll give the DC-in board a shot. I know my original battery still works. It is even fully charged, at least as full as it ever gets. I also know that my laptop never acted strange before, so I'd hate to think the logic board suffered catastrophic failure like that.

Actually, come to think about it, I had noticed ever since I've had it that it made sounds that were similar to the faint ticking noise I expect from a traditional hard drive, but I had an SSD so found that weird. I always figured I just needed to clean out, or maybe replace a fan, since it would make more noise under load. I never got around to doing that before this happened though. I wonder if it may have been something besides a fan, perhaps something related. Any thoughts on that?

'Ticking' noises as you call there one or both of two things, the fan is faulty, it cannot spin properly and thus makes a ticking sound as it tries to spin or failing capacitors. Failing capacitors is usually the common cause of ticking noises in faulty electronic equipment. The ticking noise is due to an 'arc effect' happening inside the capacitor. This is not supposed to happen hence it's failure.

I suspect there is one or two capacitors failing on the charging circuit. I notice from your other posts you say the machine reports that the power supply is being detected as 25w instead of 45w. If this was actually the case then the machine would not actually power on at all. Something on the logic board has gone wrong and it is misreporting the W of the power supply, this in turn has an affect on the charging circuit because it see's the power coming in to charge the battery is not strong enough.

I know on newer macbooks they have whats called an 'smc', this chip controls fan speeds, calculation of battery charging and power supply W detection. If your machine has something similar, this chip could be faulty also.

 

[dbdjre0143]

'Ticking' noises as you call there one or both of two things, the fan is faulty, it cannot spin properly and thus makes a ticking sound as it tries to spin or failing capacitors. Failing capacitors is usually the common cause of ticking noises in faulty electronic equipment. The ticking noise is due to an 'arc effect' happening inside the capacitor. This is not supposed to happen hence it's failure.

I suspect there is one or two capacitors failing on the charging circuit. I notice from your other posts you say the machine reports that the power supply is being detected as 25w instead of 45w. If this was actually the case then the machine would not actually power on at all. Something on the logic board has gone wrong and it is misreporting the W of the power supply, this in turn has an affect on the charging circuit because it see's the power coming in to charge the battery is not strong enough.

I know on newer macbooks they have whats called an 'smc', this chip controls fan speeds, calculation of battery charging and power supply W detection. If your machine has something similar, this chip could be faulty also.

I'm a bit confused. I haven't said anything about the power supply being detected as 25W. Are you presuming that based on the fact that it isn't charging or lighting up, or perhaps you're thinking of someone else? My laptop indeed does not power on at all, using the fully charged battery or the AC Adapter. Good thought about the capacitors, though I hope if they have failed, that they are in the charging circuitry on the DC-board rather than the logic board.

 

[laptech]

I'm a bit confused. I haven't said anything about the power supply being detected as 25W. Are you presuming that based on the fact that it isn't charging or lighting up, or perhaps you're thinking of someone else? My laptop indeed does not power on at all, using the fully charged battery or the AC Adapter. Good thought about the capacitors, though I hope if they have failed, that they are in the charging circuitry on the DC-board rather than the logic board.

Forget about the 25w part, i've just realized i am getting your thread and another thread about charging issues totally mixed up

From what i've re-read (having to refresh memory so i do not get confused again), with the machine on, installing the new battery in the manner you did (being the wrong thing to do by the way), caused a power surge through your machine because the battery was so flat that it couldn't handle the sudden rush of power to charge the battery OR..... the new battery was faulty and caused the battery circuit to short out.

With the DC led not lighting up, that indicates to me that component(s) on the logic board have been damaged. Depending on it's design it should have a couple of fuses protecting the logic board. The DC board may have a fuse on it but i am not sure.

I repair the current range of macbooks and when i get them with the fault 'no dc led', it is always something to do with the either the charging circuit gone faulty and it's taken down the rest of the board, the protection fuses on the logic boards have blown, the DC board has gone faulty, the circuit that provides the main 3v and 5v voltages to the logic board has gone faulty, the SMC (in your case the PMU) has gone faulty or the circuity that detects the DC plug has gone faulty.

Hopefully it's the DC board that's gone, otherwise your looking at a new logic board, or repair of your board.

 

[dbdjre0143]

Hi everyone. I realized that I never posted the end-results of this saga. Sadly, the DC board did not change behavior at all. I hunted for a motherboard for quite awhile, but never found any I was willing to pay for (aka, never found any that didn't cost more than I paid for the computer!).
So, I ended up getting lucky on eBay and picking up a 15" HR/DLSD (A1138) to replace it for a very reasonable price because it was "password locked" . I actually prefer the portability of the 15" anyway. I had really thought I'd like the giant screen of the 17" but it was just so big in my lap. Plus the batteries for the 15" are cheap! Got a brand new one on Amazon for $16, and it lasts 2.5-3 hours with light usage or around 1.5 hours if I'm hitting it hard with TFF or the like.
Anyways, if any of you kind folks who tried to help with it would want the A1139 for parts, I'd be glad to send them to you for cost of shipping (minus the RAM and SSD which have found their new happy home in my A1138 serving as my new DD) . The HR screen on the old one was very nice so it'd be great for someone wanting to upgrade a non hi-res 17" Powerbook.

 

[eyoungren]

Anyways, if any of you kind folks who tried to help with it would want the A1139 for parts, I'd be glad to send them to you for cost of shipping (minus the RAM and SSD which have found their new happy home in my A1138 serving as my new DD) . The HR screen on the old one was very nice so it'd be great for someone wanting to upgrade a non hi-res 17" Powerbook.

PM @pl1984

He needs a NVRAM battery.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/i-guess-it-just-wasnt-meant-to-be.2103077/#post-25751765

 

[AphoticD]

Hi everyone. I realized that I never posted the end-results of this saga. Sadly, the DC board did not change behavior at all. I hunted for a motherboard for quite awhile, but never found any I was willing to pay for (aka, never found any that didn't cost more than I paid for the computer!).
So, I ended up getting lucky on eBay and picking up a 15" HR/DLSD (A1138) to replace it for a very reasonable price because it was "password locked" . I actually prefer the portability of the 15" anyway. I had really thought I'd like the giant screen of the 17" but it was just so big in my lap. Plus the batteries for the 15" are cheap! Got a brand new one on Amazon for $16, and it lasts 2.5-3 hours with light usage or around 1.5 hours if I'm hitting it hard with TFF or the like.
Anyways, if any of you kind folks who tried to help with it would want the A1139 for parts, I'd be glad to send them to you for cost of shipping (minus the RAM and SSD which have found their new happy home in my A1138 serving as my new DD) . The HR screen on the old one was very nice so it'd be great for someone wanting to upgrade a non hi-res 17" Powerbook.

Nicely resolved!

Your mention of the cheap battery, inspired me to share on a new thread:
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/replacement-batteries-for-powerbook-ibook-macbook.2103116/