screen dimms while installing OS 10.2.4

Thread view:

Enable EMail Alerts

Start New Thread

Thread rating:

james - 27 Aug 2005 19:23 GMT

Hello,
I recently acquired a powerbook G3 233. It has 160 megs of ram and
a 6.4 gig hard drive. OS 8.6 was installed on it but it was set to
French and I wanted it in English so I got a set of OS 10.2.4
CDs and tried installing it.

It seems to install fine but what is happening is that when the
Mac OSX splash screen starts the system dimms the screen to the point
where I can't see anything. If I stare at the screen I can just make
out the text and windows although sometimes I can't see where the
mouse is. After much squinting I was able to install the OS but the
problem persists.

Any ideas on how to get the screen brightness to stay reasonable?
I turned off the energy saving features (I think) but that didn't
make any difference. In OS 8.x the screen was perfect.

Otherwise it seems to boot up reasonably quick.

If this is the wrong newsgroup to post this please tell me. I haven't
needed to post anything in a while...

thx,
james

Reply to this Message

matt neuburg - 27 Aug 2005 22:46 GMT

> Hello,
> I recently acquired a powerbook G3 233. It has 160 megs of ram and
> a 6.4 gig hard drive. OS 8.6 was installed on it but it was set to
> French and I wanted it in English so I got a set of OS 10.2.4
> CDs and tried installing it.

160 megs of RAM is not enough to run Mac OS X. So maybe your problem is
a different kind of dimm. :) Seriously, my first move here would be to
add lots more RAM. (By the way 6.4 gig is cutting it a bit close too,
though I'm running Panther on a 6-gig Tangerine iBook with no problems
at all.)

> It seems to install fine but what is happening is that when the
> Mac OSX splash screen starts the system dimms the screen to the point
> where I can't see anything. If I stare at the screen I can just make
> out the text and windows although sometimes I can't see where the
> mouse is. After much squinting I was able to install the OS but the
> problem persists.

Are you saying that you *have* in fact installed Mac OS X? If so, use
System Preferences to get to the Display pane and adjust the brightness
there. On my machine, pressing the F2 key repeatedly has the same
effect, but that might not work on your machine.

Also, if I were you I'd try zapping PRAM three or four times (hold down
option-command-P-R during startup until it has "bonged" several times).

m.

Signature

matt neuburg, phd = matt@tidbits.com, http://www.tidbits.com/matt/
Tiger - http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/tiger-customizing.html
AppleScript - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005571
Read TidBITS! It's free and smart. http://www.tidbits.com

Reply to this Message

james - 28 Aug 2005 03:52 GMT

>>I recently acquired a powerbook G3 233. It has 160 megs of ram and
>>a 6.4 gig hard drive. OS 8.6 was installed on it but it was set to
[quoted text clipped - 5 lines]
> though I'm running Panther on a 6-gig Tangerine iBook with no problems
> at all.)

hehe, yeah I was a bit worried that the RAM and CPU (233) would be too
slow. I was originally trying to get OS9.x installed on it but couldn't
get my hands on an install cd.
After getting OS X installed on it it seems reasonably quick though.
I'm doing a system upgrade so hopefully the speed stays reasonable.
Of course, I haven't used it for anything really yet so once I
start running some apps on it then we'll see how it performs...

>>It seems to install fine but what is happening is that when the
>>Mac OSX splash screen starts the system dimms the screen to the point
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>>problem persists.
> Are you saying that you *have* in fact installed Mac OS X?

Yes. It was a pain to get through the install kind of blind but
I eventually made it through though.

> If so, use
> System Preferences to get to the Display pane and adjust the brightness
> there. On my machine, pressing the F2 key repeatedly has the same
> effect, but that might not work on your machine.

At the time I tried this it didn't do anything unfortunately.

> Also, if I were you I'd try zapping PRAM three or four times (hold down
> option-command-P-R during startup until it has "bonged" several times).

Ok, once I did this I rebooted and the screen was still too dim.
But, once it was at the desktop I pressed the physical brightness
control button on the powerbook and the brightness immediately
snapped up to normal! The strange thing is that I have to press
that button once each time I reboot or it stays too dim.

So, it's essentially working now. thx for the help!

ttyl,
james

Reply to this Message

Stephen Grady - 28 Aug 2005 07:18 GMT

> >>I recently acquired a powerbook G3 233. It has 160 megs of ram and
> >>a 6.4 gig hard drive. OS 8.6 was installed on it but it was set to
[quoted text clipped - 45 lines]
> ttyl,
> james

James,

Similar machine (PowerBook G3, 266, 512MB RAM), identical problem. I
found the solution was to boot into OS9, then boot back into OSX.
Zapping the PRAM did nothing. Changing the the RAM to different
manufacturers did nothing. Boot into OS9, then boot into OSX and the
screen is fine. If you force a shutdown or the computer crashes (kernel
panic) the problem starts again. Boot into OS9, then boot back into OSX.

Reply to this Message

matt neuburg - 28 Aug 2005 16:49 GMT

> > > Also, if I were you I'd try zapping PRAM three or four times (hold down
> > > option-command-P-R during startup until it has "bonged" several times).
[quoted text clipped - 17 lines]
> screen is fine. If you force a shutdown or the computer crashes (kernel
> panic) the problem starts again. Boot into OS9, then boot back into OSX.

Similar machine (not so similar really: it's an original Tangerine
iBook): similar problem! It's dim every time I boot up. The funny thing
is that I've stopped thinking about this; I just hit the brightness key
after every restart. This is probably a bug in the way Mac OS X
interacts with the hardware. I don't know if it's fixed in Tiger because
Tiger won't install on this machine (well, it probably will, but there's
no easy way to do it so I haven't bothered). m.

PS James: More RAM will make a huge difference to speed and to hard disk
usage.

Signature

Reply to this Message

Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / August 2005

screen dimms while installing OS 10.2.4