[muglo] A Powerbook G3

It has what might be a number of problems, or one problem causing other 
erratic behaviours. Bit of a puzzle.

This has been in to Peter at MacOutpost and he has suggested a number of 
likely things that it could be, but to chase them one at a time would be 
too pricey.

The problems it has are 

1) It won't start reliably
 a) Won't start if powercord plugged in
 b) the drive won't mount when I do boot to a CD
2) The keyboard is dead

At this state Peter had his diagnostic look at it and offered:

1) that the drive might need to be replaced -> $80
2) possible logic board problem -> replace -> $375
3) Sound card/Power inverter -> replace -> $265
4) a replacement keyboard -> $139

Well. I let the baby sit around. It's been left alone for about a month 
now. Two days ago I decided to poke at it again. 

Did the powermanager reset sequence as I have done a hundred times (take 
battery out, disconnect, press keys, wait... etc.) Seems to work from the 
keyboard. The green light comes on. whirring and clicking noises...

Well the sweet thing decides to work again. I pulled everything off the 
hard drive - yes the drive mounted, and booted.
It wouldn't wake up from Sleep if the power cord was inserted.
It would boot to the battery... which would charge if the power cord was 
inserted. 
It would shut down and restart to the battery but not restart if the 
powercord was inserted.
It would go to sleep but wake up immediately if the powercord was 
unplugged.
The keyboard remains dead throughout all this.

So after a day of playing with it, it seems to be perfectly normal again 
- except for the keyboard. 

I can shut down and boot with the powercord.....

 SO I decide that maybe there is a connector loose for the keyboard. Take 
it apart. look. reset the ribbons and connectors... everything seems 
fine. put it back together and now its back to stage one. Dead powerbook. 
Can't find the drive to boot to it. mount to Tech Tool CD, can't find the 
drive to mount it. Now it won't boot at all.

Some kind of short somewhere? Is it in the powermanager? (i don't have a 
keyboard, obviously to hit the Function/Control/Shift powerbutton 
sequence. The sequence doesn't seem to work now.) 

We don't want to spend, again, what we paid for it to fix it. We will 
have to replace it for my son needs it for school. If we can fix it for 
about $100, we'll go there. And we would rather spend $100 than have to 
get another laptop in the $600 range. And if we can't fix it, we'll have 
to get another laptop anyway....

>                  <http://home.golden.net/~samu>                 <
>   There's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.  <

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