G3 Firewire Grey Screen at Startup

Question

G3 Firewire Grey Screen at Startup

I just took the G3 out of mothballs and gave it to my children. The unit booted just fine into OS9 but the internal batteries must have gone out because it was reading 1904. The unit worked fine until yesterday upon booting I was only able to get a dull grey screen (nothing else). I tried resetting the PRAM (four times) and still nothing-at least the keyboard was working because I got to restart with the startup sound. I tried to boot from an OS 10.3 startup disk-momentary CD sounds then nothing. I tried to reset the power management system without success. I have extracted the batteries and will try to reseat the motherboard next? Any suggestions?
Thanks

Posted on Oct 13, 2005 10:23 AM

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Answer 1

jpl

Level 7

28,285 points

Oct 14, 2005 11:06 AM in response to Charles Prussak

Charles,

Welcome to the Discussions!

Since you know your way around this powerbook, I would also remove/reseat the memory modules plus a very firm push on the microprocessor card. When removing the microprocessor card, please do not remove the heat tube from the top of the CPU...everything comes out in one piece. If you have removed the heat tube, you should probably scrape the old thermal transfer pad from the top of the CPU and surface of the heat tube and install a new pad.

The internal backup batteries are rechargeable so give them some time to charge up. Even if the batteries are dead, the 'book will run fine as long as the power adapter and/or main battery provides power to the 'book to maintain the PRAM settings. Startup and running are unaffected by a dead "PRAM" battery, unlike a desktop computer.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=30580

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Answer 2

Oct 14, 2005 1:23 PM in response to jpl

Thanks for the update. I dug deeply into the G3 last night and reattached as many connectors as I could access (I did not remove the heat tube from the CPU). I took out the PRAM battery and main battery and tried to boot the system from the power adaptor. I still didn't get anything. I went back and found the G3 start-up disks and tried to boot from these-nothing. Of interest, in looking for the G3 disks (system 9.x) I tried booting from a G4 disk. For a moment I thought that I might have something that works-I got the smiley Mac icon. That is all I got. At this point, I will try replacing the PRAM batteries in case something is shorting out here (I doubt it because I had no success when they were removed). Finally, when I boot under firewire mode (holding the option key when I boot) I do get the various boot icons and the track pad does move the cursor. From this, I suspect that there is something going on with the processor firmware.

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