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Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / January 2008Powerbook DVI 800 Trouble shooting help
All, I received a free PB DVI 800 from Craigslist and thought I'd try to get it working. It came with no ram, harddrive, battery, power adapter or cd drive. I know nothing about the laptop's history. I bought an adapter and plugged it in. When I power it on, this is what happens: 1. Power button does not blink or stay blue. 2. The pb makes one short beep then no other sounds. 3. The blue led button under the screen stays constant for 2 secs, then blinks twice, then stays on for 2 seconds... then repeats. I tried resetting the PMU which did nothing. My questions are: 1. When starting with no ram, hd or battery, what should I expect? 2. Does the two blinks mean anything? 3. Should the fan(s) start turning with power? Any incite is appreciated. Thank you, Terry In article <c770cb69-28b7-46fc-a586-dc5ec30e9e8f@m77g2000hsc.googlegroups.com>, > All, > I received a free PB DVI 800 from Craigslist and thought I'd try to [quoted text clipped - 5 lines] > 1. Power button does not blink or stay blue. > 2. The pb makes one short beep then no other sounds. is it a normal mac startup sound or something else? if the latter, it's a diagnostic tone and if there's no ram installed, it would make sense. > 3. The blue led button under the screen stays constant for 2 secs, > then blinks twice, then stays on for 2 seconds... then repeats. i don't recall a blue led, but that does not sound normal. > My questions are: > 1. When starting with no ram, hd or battery, what should I expect? without ram, you should expect nothing at all. at a minimum, you need at least *some* memory installed. 128-256 meg will suffice for testing it, but you'll want more if you plan to actually use it. without a hard drive, you'll get a blinking ? because it can't find a bootable system, but you can boot off a cd or external hard drive instead. > I received a free PB DVI 800 from Craigslist and thought I'd try to > get it working. It came with no ram, harddrive, battery, power > adapter or cd drive. I know nothing about the laptop's history. I > bought an adapter and plugged it in. When I power it on, this is what > happens: For reference, I have a PowerBook G4 DVI 667 (baby brother of the 800) which developed a similar sounding fault last year, and I did a fair amount of troubleshooting trying to fix it (unsuccessfully). I suspect mine has developed a logic board fault (e.g. a broken track or dry solder joint), but I haven't tried replacing the internal NVRAM battery, which might be flat. > 1. Power button does not blink or stay blue. The power button has no LED or other illumination of any kind. It is a simple button. There is a white LED under the screen which is used to indicate the power state (e.g. slow pulsing while asleep). It is visible from both the inside and outside of the screen. > 2. The pb makes one short beep then no other sounds. If you have no RAM, then this is normal behaviour. You must have some RAM in the computer before it will get anywhere beyond an error beep and blinking power LED. > 3. The blue led button under the screen stays constant for 2 secs, > then blinks twice, then stays on for 2 seconds... then repeats. Along with the beep, that's an indication that the power-on self test failed. There is no easy way to tell what it is complaining about, but without any RAM this test will always fail. I'm not sure why you have a blue LED - all Titanium PowerBooks I've seen have a white LED under the screen. Maybe your one got replaced by a previous owner. > I tried resetting the PMU which did nothing. > > My questions are: > 1. When starting with no ram, hd or battery, what should I expect? Exactly what you see (due to the lack of RAM only). Add some RAM (PC133 SO-DIMM, not EDO) and you might get further. If it still beeps in the same way, then either it doesn't like the memory you have installed, or there is another fault preventing it starting up. The lack of a hard drive will not cause any problems (other than not being able to boot from the hard drive, of course) - you should at least get the normal startup chime then a blinking icon on the screen complaining about not being able to find a startup volume. Battery is even less important. The computer will run fine off mains with no battery (just don't pull out the mains plug while it is operating). > 2. Does the two blinks mean anything? Possibly error 2 (the number of beeps might also be an error code), but the error codes are not publically documented. You'd need the service manual for that model, which isn't distributed by Apple outside of its registered service agents, but you might be able to find a copy on the web somewhere. > 3. Should the fan(s) start turning with power? Not until the computer is doing something which involves heavy CPU or graphics use. I don't notice the fans under normal operation of my PBG4.  SignatureDavid Empson dempson@actrix.gen.nz On Jan 6, 2:31 pm, "testert...@gmail.com" <testert...@gmail.com> wrote: > All, > I received a free PB DVI 800 from Craigslist and thought I'd try to [quoted text clipped - 19 lines] > > Terry Thank you all for the advice. I will get some ram and see if I get any further. BTW (Don't you hate when someone says that when you are troubleshooting a problem): The power adapter I got is a Kennsington rated at 70w. If I leave the pb on in blinking mode, the laptop gets quite hot. I'm not sure if it's an issue with too much voltage or the fact that fans have not kicked in. I'll update once I've added ram. Thank you, Terry On Jan 7, 9:31 am, "testert...@gmail.com" <testert...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Jan 6, 2:31 pm, "testert...@gmail.com" <testert...@gmail.com> > wrote: [quoted text clipped - 37 lines] > > Terry Hello again! I'm making some progress with my Powerbook. I installed 512mb ran and started it. Now I get the normal Mac startup tone. I noticed the LED light at the bottom of the screen no longer blinks. In fact it does nothing. Initially I thought the screen was blank, then I noticed, I was getting a faint disk with a question mark. I assumed that is expected with not HD or cd to boot off of. Adjusting the brightness on the keyboard did nothing. Moving the screen (bad cable) didn't make a difference. What can the problem be? My next step is to replace the inverter board? I also read about replacing the CCFL (backlight) bulb, but not sure if that is possible with a PB G4 800 DVI. Am I on the right track? Thank you, Terry |
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