The iBook G4s are good machines. I bought my end-of-the-line 1.42GHz 14" in 2004 and it hasn't let me down. I've got its RAM maxed to 1.5GB and am upgrading the hard drive to 120GB as soon as the drive shows up.
But yeah, the failure on those things is usually related to cracked solder joints in some of the little SOIC-packaged devices in the power section. It's not hard to repair, so long as you're handy with a soldering iron. Markedly easier and a virtually guaranteed repair, unlike home repair attempts of failed GPUs (or other BGA devices).
But good score. It's amazing what you can get for free when you know the right people. I got this 500MHz PowerBook G4 for free (in addition to a 400MHz model and a stack of questionable parts for some newer 1GHz 15"ers), and once I gave it a new HD and used a fair amount of JB Weld epoxy on the display to fix the broken hinge (in addition to the NGE mod), it works fine. The battery only has about 80 cycles, too.
But yeah, the failure on those things is usually related to cracked solder joints in some of the little SOIC-packaged devices in the power section. It's not hard to repair, so long as you're handy with a soldering iron. Markedly easier and a virtually guaranteed repair, unlike home repair attempts of failed GPUs (or other BGA devices).
But good score. It's amazing what you can get for free when you know the right people. I got this 500MHz PowerBook G4 for free (in addition to a 400MHz model and a stack of questionable parts for some newer 1GHz 15"ers), and once I gave it a new HD and used a fair amount of JB Weld epoxy on the display to fix the broken hinge (in addition to the NGE mod), it works fine. The battery only has about 80 cycles, too.