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...