Kris Tilford wrote: > On Dec 18, 2008, at 3:45 PM, nestwasright wrote: > > >> Do you good folks think changing the cable for the hard drive would >> get this working? >> > > Seems unlikely to me. > > My reasoning: The HD and the CD drive are on separate busses, so if > the HD cable was bad, the CD drive should still boot normally, but > evidently doesn't. Likewise, if neither the HD or CD would boot, an > external Firewire drive still should boot. > I've tried the external Firewire solution, but the unit I bought would not boot without first installing the software it came with on the machine. And that defeated the purpose. I've not had luck with any others. Please let me know if you have one that has worked for you. > I haven't seen any mention in your previous reports of trying the > verbose startup with "Cmd-v" keys at startup? The fact that you can't > boot into Target Disk mode using the "T" key at startup is a very bad > sign. This could imply corrupted firmware, and since Apple never > released any firmware updates for the 17" PowerBook G4 you are > basically out-of-luck. This idea of corrupted firmware is not common > or likely because the self-test that produces the chime will check-sum > the firmware, so the corruption would have to be two bits both > flipping within that same portion of the firmware so that the check- > sum would remain valid, and this is VERY unlikely. > > Are you sure it's not booting normally and the screen itself isn't the > problem? Have you tried an external monitor? If you hear the HD going, > and after a suitable amount of time for boot to complete you press the > Power key followed by the Return key and it shuts down normally, this > would imply that it's completing a normal boot process and your LCD or > video card is bad. > I'm not sure about the screen being the problem. I will check. But as you said, the fact that I can't get it to work using the T at start is an indication of some serious problem. So, I doubt that the screen is the problem. I will hook it up to a monitor and let you know the results. To be frank, there is little, if anything that the Apple bar people would do differently. I've fixed machines they've condemned before. > Perhaps reassemble and take it to an Apple Genius Bar to see what they > think? > > > >
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