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Strange PB G4 12" Problem...

C

Cloud Strife

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Sep 8, 2008
12
0
Hi, I recently acquired a PB G4 12" 1.33GHz. It has a strange problem. It will power up just fine (with chime), boot to the gray apple logo with spinning progress disc and so on. But when it gets to the point where the login window is supposed to appear, I get a blue screen with a mouse arrow. The weird thing is, I can still type my username/password, press enter, and it will log in (even though the screen is still solid blue). After logging in, I can press the power button and then enter to shut the machine down. When I boot in verbose mode, it displays everything normally except that the blank screen still appears when the GUI starts up. When shutting down the system booted in verbose mode, the screen will change from its solid blue background to the black screen with white text indicating "syncing disks... killing all processes... CPU halted" and shut down normally. Booting to single user mode and removing all GeForce and NVDA kexts will make it boot to the login window with graphics, but the system hangs about a minute after logging in. It will display the spinning beachball for ~20s before freezing, but holding the power button down for 3-5 secs will shut it down. The copy of Leopard on the machine was clean installed with another Powerbook (15" 1.25GHz) and the hard disk has no problems, since the disk boots Leopard every time it's installed in the 15".

I've given as much details as possible, but if I have missed anything, feel free to tell me. Thanks in advance!
 
Wait so you've installed OS X on your 15" PB and then swapped the drive to your 12" PB?

Why not just install it on your 12" ? (If I read correctly)
 
Eddyisgreat said:
Wait so you've installed OS X on your 15" PB and then swapped the drive to your 12" PB?

Why not just install it on your 12" ? (If I read correctly)
Click to expand...

Because it does the same thing when booted from the Install DVD. Solid blue screen with mouse cursor after the gray apple logo screen.
 
Cloud Strife said:
Because it does the same thing when booted from the Install DVD. Solid blue screen with mouse cursor after the gray apple logo screen.
Click to expand...

I have the same laptop in a closet at home. I will try to boot from the install DVD and let you know what happens.

Cheers,
 
It almost sounds like it thinks you have an external display connected. Have you tried hooking it up to a monitor?
 
Nope, because I don't have the mini VGA to VGA dongle thing. All I got was the laptop and the power brick (which is an apple original 45W).
 
Nope, because I don't have the mini VGA to VGA dongle thing. All I got was the laptop and the power brick (which is an apple original 45W).

EDIT: Does the AHT on my Powerbook come on another CD, or is it integrated into the OS X Install DVD?

EDIT #2: I can't seem to find a DMG of a AHT image for my Powerbook. Mactracker says it's AHT (PowerBook) 2.5.2. I could only find a page on the apple support website that linked to AHT images for older machines like TiBooks, G4 Cubes, and Power Mac G4s. The only link I found to said image was in an apple service source site, and I cannot access said page because I don't have a login.
 
Re-seat the airport card?

This might be a longshot, because it doesn't specifically address your (weird) symptoms, but you might consider powering everything down, unplugging, taking out the battery, removing the airport card and replacing it, making sure it's well connected. (All that takes only two minutes, of course)

My PB12 (1ghz) goes through weird start up issues if the airport card is not fully connected. That's rare; it happened once after the initial installation, and then again the other day, I think just because it had been jostled around and dusty for 4 years. The symptoms aren't the same as yours, but they vary, so it may be worth a shot. It was a pretty common problem a while back, with confirmed solutions, although I don't know what the airport card has to do with anything.
 
AHT can be found on your OS X restore (grey) discs IIRC, at least on Intels.
 
Got a copy of Apple Service Diagnostic 2.5.7, and the PB passes all tests except the rear fan test. It said that the fan was spinning faster than it should. But there are lines on some areas of the screen, and it doesn't lock up.
 
Sorry to say but I think your video card is going. It did happen on these 12" PBs.
 
Cloud Strife said:
Got a copy of Apple Service Diagnostic 2.5.7, and the PB passes all tests except the rear fan test. It said that the fan was spinning faster than it should. But there are lines on some areas of the screen, and it doesn't lock up.
Click to expand...

So for now, all is well?

BTW, I couldn't test the Leopard install, forgot I only have Intel DVDs from Intel MBPs and they don't work on PPC systems. I will need to get a retail version to test.

Cheers,
 
All is not well. I see lines of garbage on the screen when it is displaying the Apple Service Diagnostic GUI. (It looks like OS 9!) The funny thing is, it only shows these lines in ASD. The gray apple screen is perfectly fine.
 
Nothing to reseat as I took out the 1GB stick and it's running on its 256MB of built-in RAM... Unless you want me to hammer the RAM chips out of the mobo and then solder them back :p Also, I tried a PMU reset but to no avail. It still has a fondness for polkadots, jail bar patterns and flashing lines.
 
The poka dot patern is the same as mine when taxing the GPU, if I switch to 16bit color it looks ok, changing to millions of colors gives me "artifacts" randomly across the screen.

I even get this with a Ubuntu live CD so it's definetly the graphics or mainboard problem. I get the same issues on an external display.

Running in thousands of colors works ok but if I start a game or watch full screen video the problem returns.
 
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