Some more details for the curious:
I should have known that I was on to something when pressing that IC (known as the Vreg, located under the DC-in power cable) would change the state of the machine from "on-but-seemingly-dead" to "on-with-fan-blowing-and-screen-flashing."
I hadn't thought to look closer, with strong lights and a magnifying glass to examine the pins. Sure enough, I did that last evening, and I probed the pins with a small screwdriver. Very closely, I could see that pin 28 was partially (totally?) disconnected, and would move about. This is apparently the power pin to the IC, and when the iBook was on, making a short between this pin and its neighbor produced a spark (did this twice, not fatal to iBook).
I did some more "tamping down" the best that I could, and I did manage to get the iBook to chime, and boot to the login screen as I have it configured. It is still unstable. That pin is still loose, and sometimes it will come undone when the iBook is on, meaning that the screen will go to black.
I actually had this black screen symptom twice, about 5-6 weeks ago, and I thought it was odd. The iBook would always sleep when I didn't use it, and I thought it odd that it had "died in its sleep." Well, I think now that the pin was working its way loose, and it wasn't until 4 weeks ago that things got really serious.
Anywho, I'm off to ye olde local Radioshack to buy my first-ever soldering kit. Hopefully I'll have better luck than with the white G3 iBook.
I should have known that I was on to something when pressing that IC (known as the Vreg, located under the DC-in power cable) would change the state of the machine from "on-but-seemingly-dead" to "on-with-fan-blowing-and-screen-flashing."
I hadn't thought to look closer, with strong lights and a magnifying glass to examine the pins. Sure enough, I did that last evening, and I probed the pins with a small screwdriver. Very closely, I could see that pin 28 was partially (totally?) disconnected, and would move about. This is apparently the power pin to the IC, and when the iBook was on, making a short between this pin and its neighbor produced a spark (did this twice, not fatal to iBook).
I did some more "tamping down" the best that I could, and I did manage to get the iBook to chime, and boot to the login screen as I have it configured. It is still unstable. That pin is still loose, and sometimes it will come undone when the iBook is on, meaning that the screen will go to black.
I actually had this black screen symptom twice, about 5-6 weeks ago, and I thought it was odd. The iBook would always sleep when I didn't use it, and I thought it odd that it had "died in its sleep." Well, I think now that the pin was working its way loose, and it wasn't until 4 weeks ago that things got really serious.
Anywho, I'm off to ye olde local Radioshack to buy my first-ever soldering kit. Hopefully I'll have better luck than with the white G3 iBook.