I don't know if this is your problem, but a weak -- as opposed to dead -- pram battery can cause many strange problems. Disconnecting it is easy; lift out the keyboard, and gently disconnect the pram battery. Then reboot and try the magic reset commands again. Give it a shot and see. Maybe things will get better.

Click to expand...

I agree completely - I've found that PRAM batteries that have about half their full charge left will often prevent a proper PRAM/NVRAM reset. If they have about 75% or more of their full charge, they'll usually work fine; and if they have less than half of their full charge, they'll usually act dead. But if it's more than half and less than about 75%, they can be really stubborn.

I had a PowerPC Color Classic that wouldn't work right until I yanked a half-charged PRAM battery and replaced it with a dead one (I didn't have a spare good one to use). And I had a Powerbook 2400 that worked fine but absolutely, positively would not install any version of Rhapsody/OS X Server 1.x/Mac OS X+Xpostfacto, because the NVRAM was corrupted, no doubt by a wonky PRAM battery.

M