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PowerBook G4 fans never turn on!

P

paul019

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 13, 2012
5
0
Hey all,

I bought an old PowerBook G4 from EBay a few months ago. At the time I couldn't use it. I knew it worked but it needed work doing to it, it needs a new optical drive and there's an issue with the mac os 10.3 installation.

The person who owned it before me wiped off all of her applications, included important system ones such as the installer.app, systempreferences and som others.

I have installed a few apps such as VLC player and Abiword but one thing I've noticed with it is that the fans never turn on at all. It can get boiling hot but neither will turn on.

Can anyone help!?
 
Have you used program called Temperature Monitor to check what it says? Does machine hang, reboot or show similar issues which point to overheating? The fan might need cleaning or it could of course be dead. iFixit.com has instructions for opening the machine. Resetting PMU might also help, however I don't recall how it was done with PowerBooks, was it either removing all power sources (battery and charger) and then pressing power button for couple seconds or was it that you shut down the machine and then power it up while still pressing the power button until you hear a loud beep.

EDIT: as my sig says, I have PB but currently no charger so I can't test...
 
paul019 said:
…but one thing I've noticed with it is that the fans never turn on at all. It can get boiling hot but neither will turn on.

Can anyone help!?
Click to expand...
PowerBook G4s run hot. One fan will come on first and the second if needed. Mine do not come on until the PowerBook reaches a CPU temp (indicated from iStat) of 140º.

If your Mac is functioning just fine at "boiling hot," is not shutting down instantly and doesn't seem to be suffering any ill effects then it's still not hot enough to turn the fans on.

If the fans are malfunctioning or disconnected your Mac will shut down instantly (thermal shutdown) at some point. If that isn't happening, then you're fine. If it is happening, you didn't mention it and I would then take the advice of Zotaccian.

You may want to look at MenuMeters, iStat Menus or Temperature Monitor (as mentioned) just to observe your temps.

My Macs generally operate from 112º to 140º+ (when the fans kick in). Normal range is around 125º to 138º. At least for my Macs anyway.
 
eyoungren said:
If the fans are malfunctioning or disconnected your Mac will shut down instantly (thermal shutdown) at some point. If that isn't happening, then you're fine. If it is happening, you didn't mention it and I would then take the advice of Zotaccian.
Click to expand...

It doesn't shut down, which is a good sign! But it's alarming that it gets that hot!

Btw, its a TiBook G4 DVI 800mhz
 
I will admit that when I have my G4 on my lap and the temp hits 140º it's quite warm. But the Mac is designed to operate in those temps even though it may feel hot to me. There is an Apple support article for this that was released some years ago because people were asking Apple about this.

Basically, the document says don't worry about it, it's normal. Getting something to monitor your Mac's temps will go a long way to alleviating your concern.
 
Run something like seti@home - that should kick in the fan for the CPU at least, better still a Quake III or IV timedemo so the GPU is taxed as well - both fans should come on - Download iStat or some such fan/temp monitoring tool as suggested here immeditely after and check. If it doesnt hang it should be fine, G4 and 5's were based on server CPU's so they do run hot - Its been a while since I had my PB but I don't remember the fans kicking in much (except for Seti!)
 
Last revision of G4 that Apple used (7447a) runs cool based on my experience, I have owned couple iBook G4s and PowerBook G4's and they all run pretty cool, I however block all Flash ads and as most of use know, Flash is pain for G4. Thread starter has older revision which might just run that hot.

One thing which crossed my mind was that I'm not sure if early G4 processors had internal temp sensor, if not those monitoring apps will probably not show temperatures for the CPU.
 
Wirelessly posted

I've had nothing but a bad experience with that app. Anytime I run it on both my PowerBooks I get what seems like a broken GUI whenever I run it. I can punch in numbers but it never seems to register. Quit the app, reload and it looks as if I never entered anything. The command line from previous versions also does not seem to work.

Further, those few people who had the same issues I do and asked questions on the developer's site were never answered. Lastly the app started Console flipping out by writing error code every few seconds. This always kept my CPU busy which of course kept the fans busy.

Maybe it's a great app, but it's completely broken on my Macs and just does not work.

Or maybe I misunderstand how it's supposed to be used?
 
I have tried G4fancontrol but that just seems to bounce up and down in my doc and not open. I have also tried some temp monitoring software but that doesn't seem to work as it can't find any sensors?? Which is unusual.

Like I said in the first post too, the MacOS panther installation is KAPUT, so I'm not sure if that would have any affect on the fans running would it??

Thanks for all of your replies!
 
It might. I made the idiot mistake when I first got my 17" PowerBook of cloning the drive from my old TiBook to the 17".

It took me a year or so until I got Leopard to fully understand why my 17" was not performing. Installing Leopard installed pieces of the OS that were relevant to the 17" PB that weren't coming from my TiBook. One of those was fan control.

So, yeah, getting a decent install on there will probably help.
 
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