Repair or Wait -iBook

[mpw]

OK so here's the deal; I've got a G4 iBook purchased last August with a one-year guarantee.

When it starts-up you hear the chime and after a few seconds the screen snaps into life as a blank white screen. Then nothing for around a minute then some weired muzak starts playing. It sounds like some crappy disney tune on a loop of around 30secs. as if it were a DVD menu screen background music. That's as much as the machine can be convinced to do. I've PRAM'd it and you can get the chimes two or three times but it makes no odds. It won't do anything different starting from an install disc (although it'll take the disc in and the drives spins it just gives up when the dreaded music kicks in.

The only keys it'll recognise are the brightness, volume and eject. The disc will eject on start-up with the mouse button pressed and it'll only power down by holding the power button.

I've even tried keyboard shortcuts but nothing.

So question time;
1) WTF is going on?
2) Any ideas how to fix it?
3) If it has to be returned should I do it now and get it over with or be seaky and not return it until nearer August when (hopefully) all the G4 are used and they replace this (hopefully) terminal fault with a new MacBook???

 

[maverick808]

OK so here's the deal; I've got a G4 iBook purchased last August with a one-year guarantee.

When it starts-up you hear the chime and after a few seconds the screen snaps into life as a blank white screen. Then nothing for around a minute then some weired muzak starts playing. It sounds like some crappy disney tune on a loop of around 30secs. as if it were a DVD menu screen background music. That's as much as the machine can be convinced to do. I've PRAM'd it and you can get the chimes two or three times but it makes no odds. It won't do anything different starting from an install disc (although it'll take the disc in and the drives spins it just gives up when the dreaded music kicks in.

The only keys it'll recognise are the brightness, volume and eject. The disc will eject on start-up with the mouse button pressed and it'll only power down by holding the power button.

I've even tried keyboard shortcuts but nothing.

So question time;
1) WTF is going on?
2) Any ideas how to fix it?
3) If it has to be returned should I do it now and get it over with or be seaky and not return it until nearer August when (hopefully) all the G4 are used and they replace this (hopefully) terminal fault with a new MacBook???

1) I have no idea. Can you try booting off an external firewire drive. Can you access the hard-disk in target disk mode from another machine?

3) If you can wait until August before having it repaired then just throw it in the bin now. If you can go over 6 months without having use of that machine then clearly you don't need that machine at all.

 

[mpw]

1) I have no idea. Can you try booting off an external firewire drive. Can you access the hard-disk in target disk mode from another machine?

3) If you can wait until August before having it repaired then just throw it in the bin now. If you can go over 6 months without having use of that machine then clearly you don't need that machine at all.

1) How would I boot off an external FW drive? Yes I can access the HD as a FW target, I did this to back-up the data.

2) Long story but this was purchased for a relative who moved away and wanted to stay in touch. They've now come home again and have use of their desktop until they move away again next Christmas.

 

[maverick808]

1) How would I boot off an external FW drive? Yes I can access the HD as a FW target, I did this to back-up the data.

2) Long story but this was purchased for a relative who moved away and wanted to stay in touch. They've now come home again and have use of their desktop until they move away again next Christmas.

Plug in an external FW drive and during boot up hold down the Option(alt) key. A screen will appear where you can select what drive to boot off.

Ok that makes sense about the relative then. However, I'd just send it off to Apple now as it's extremely unlikely they would replace the whole machine and even if they did you'd most likely get another PPC iBook.

Remember that people can buy iBooks right now and get 3 years AppleCare on them. And Apple can't just give these people Intel machines if theirs break as some of them are deliberately buying PPC ones to run Classic apps and PPC only software like Photoshop and DreamWeaver. Also, some older PPC apps will never be ported to Intel so if the buyer needs them then they may want to stick with PPC as long as possible. In their case, Apple replacing their PPC with an Intel would be unnacceptable.

So Apple have to keep a backstock of PPC iBooks and all the parts to repair them for just this kind of thing. I don't think you'd have any chance of getting a broken PPC replaced with an Intel. Maybe if you got AppleCare and waited until 2008 you *might* have a chance but even then I wouldn't bet on it.

 

[crazydrumma]

I say repair...

Hey, it's under the one year warranty, so I say ship it in to apple and have them fix it now. Why wait and have a good for nothing computer for so long when you can get it fixed or replaced for free right now? It's not like that iBook is terribly obsolete. Actually, it's far from it. Just get it repaired and enjoy the computer. After all, a working mac is better than a non working one. That's just common sense.

 

[NeuronBasher]

Get it fixed now, they're not going to magically replace it with a MacBook in 6 months. I know it's just wishful thinking, but the reality is that it's not going to happen.