Problems with PB G4 display and diagnosing

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Level 1

11 points

Problems with PB G4 display and diagnosing

A friend asked me to take a look at her Powerbook G4 15" aluminum running OSX 10.5.8. The display is showing lots of horizontal lines. I'm trying to run a hardware diagnostic but she doesn't have the disks. It was a present from her ex...who took the disks etc. when he left. I downloaded the AHT 693-4420-A.dmg and burned it to a disc but when I try to boot it says it won't work with that system. Have no idea where to go from here. Is there a newer version of the AHT I can download? Any other way to run a diagnostic on the hardware? I'm far from a pro at this so any advice will be much appreciated.

thanks
Dave

Powerbook G4 15", Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Mar 20, 2011 5:10 PM

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Answer 1

BGreg

Level 6

17,558 points

Mar 20, 2011 6:11 PM in response to daverk48

Welcome to the Apple discussions.

One of the first things you can do is to hook up an external monitor to see if it exhibits the same symptoms. If yes, there's likely display adapter issues (display adapter = logic board). If no, it could be a cable problem or a display adapter problem.

The AHT was only downloadable for the first release. After that, it's only available on the OS X disks that come with the system (that you don't have). If your friends system had Applecare on it, you can download TechTool Deluxe from the Apple site. Or you can contact Apple Support to see if they still have the original OS X disks available for your friends system, for which they charge, as I recall, around $60. Otherwise, you'll need to buy TechTool Pro, which can test the hardware and do other things as well.

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