Ailing iBook G3 - Confirm my diagnosis...

#1 Sat, 7 Nov 2015 - 18:18

My oldest 800mhz G3 'book suddenly has a major issue - won't turn on with any regularity, can occasionally get restarted and booted by pressing the power button and inserting - removing - reinserting the power cord. Makes a low tone almost like a low toot sometimes with no boot, sometimes does that before booting. And, it will not charge a battery when it does boot.

I have another dead 800 with some parts I can cannibalize. My question is, do the above symptoms point to just the little power board, or to a mainboard failure?

I know the teardown is a bit of a bugger - maybe something for a long winter night in the months ahead.

This one is a very early 800, probably from the first month of production in November 2002. So it is reasonable that it would be the first to fail. This one still has a silver screen betzel, like the 500mhz ones.

Thanks for any advice...

#2 Sat, 7 Nov 2015 - 20:39

The removing and replacing of the power cord temporarily fixing the issue I think points to the power input board. It's been a long time since I worked on one of these but I recall that being a common-ish problem at the time.

#3 Sun, 8 Nov 2015 - 05:20

With all the powerbooks without an internal pram battery I have found removing the battery, holding the power button to remove any residual capacitor charge and pluygging back in with battery out then starting helps.

It seems to me the power issue is corrupted by the dead or dying main battery.

Im sure I have over simplified but I have had great success with this to date, especially with G4 powerbooks.