Powerbook G4 IDE controller problem?

[Zotaccian]

I'm familiar with iMac G5 capacitor problem and all other usual Apple defects, but this one is new to me. I saw an auction of PowerBook G4 which works well except that it apparently has faulty ide controller, after some use disk speed degrades heavily and I guess the machine becomes painfully slow in certain tasks.

I assume that atleast one Macrumors user has faced this problem and if so, is it fixable? Because it appears after some use I guess it's just another type of solder failure. The owner has used it with external firewire and now decided to sell or donate it.

 

[eyoungren]

I've not had that experience, but I understand that the IDE controller is on the logciboard.

Assuming you're right and it's a solder issue, I imagine the stove fix might work. The one where you put the logic board in the oven for a while so the solder re-runs.

But I am no expert so this is just wild speculation on my part.

 

[666sheep]

You have a little "bad solder" obssesion, don't you? [joke]

To me it doesn't look like solder problem. Machine would freeze, KP i.e. hard crash. It looks like just bad/dying HDD. IDE or SATA controller failure almost never happens (maybe excluding some G3 B&W cases).

 

[4JNA]

second 666s post, supporting these things for years (hundreds probably sneaking up on thousands), i've never seen the controller be the fault, the drive is on the way out even if the diagnostics/smart say otherwise. if it was the controller, the system would not boot as it's part of the logic board. in the PC world it would be like a mobo with a bad north/south bridge chip. dead.

nothing like the smell of baking powerbooks in the morning...

 

[Zotaccian]

Well I think bad solder connection would explain most strange issues with computer hardware

But yes, I have not even seen that machine and all that information was provided by the seller. I don't know him either but somehow that auction gave me feeling that he might know computers well enough to check the HD.