PowerBook Wallstreet Fails to Boot

[Andrey Bessemer]

Hi all,

Looks I need your help, assistance and advise. Currently play with PowerBook Wallstreet (PDQ flavor) laptop which fails to boot up properly. It does startup chime, it lights the screen, it shows 'no bootable disc' floppy icon, while the cooler fan as well as hard drive seem to spin up endlessly. Some 60 sec later the beast just turns off. There's a system 9.2.2 installation media put into CD-ROM, but 'Book seems to ignore the optical drive despite keeping C key pressed for minutes.

A bit of side notes: in fact I tried two hard drives, yet achieved the same result both ways — it starts spinning up then stops almost immediately, then repeats the pattern described.

So what's the way to fix it?

 

[micahgartman]

Let's assume that your removable battery is no longer able to hold a charge.

Attach the power adapter to the 'Book and let it sit for an hour or two.

Then, look at the diagram next to the rear ports. It shows you how to reset the power management system.

Once you've completed the reset, your PowerBook will boot.

 

[Andrey Bessemer]

Appreciate your response! Well, the battery is 100% working as far as I pulled it from another Wallstreet laptop that boots seamlessly. Nextly, I tried resetting PMU with Shift/Ctrl/Fn/Power several times to no effect — the Mac still starts, then seems to spin a CD for a fraction, then hard drive starts whirring, and sixty seconds later the whole setup turns off.





Any other ideas?

 

[micahgartman]

Power off the computer and remove the CD drive from the expansion bay.

Remove any modules from the left-hand expansion bay, too.

Now try to boot the computer.

Does it POST (make the chime noise)? Does it continue to shut down?

 

[Andrey Bessemer]

Well, I pulled out the hard drive from the working Wallstreet, swapped the original HDD together with bracket, hit the power button and voilà! — the laptop booted up like a charm. Still have to test the original bracket with the replacement hard drive.

Again thank you so much for advises.

 

[micahgartman]

Awesome!!! That's the fun thing about older computers: you just never know what they're going to do