green ring on my Powerbook G4 where power adaptor plugs in turns on for less than a second and then goes dark. The battery is not being charged. Can the part inside the computer be replaced? Everything else is working.
PowerBook G4, Mac OS X (10.5.8), 1.67 GHz Memory 2GB DDR SDRAM
Hello,
You say dark? To me this would indicate a problem with the power adapter or the battery needs to be replaced.
Try resetting the PMU first to make sure it's not that
My husband brought the powerbook into Genius Bar and they tried other power adapter cables and the same thing happened. The little green ring lit-up for about 1 second, and then unlit (went dark). No orange light or any light after that. They said the hard drive looked OK, and that I did not need a new battery, but I'm not sure if they tested it with a new battery.
...they tried other power adapter cables and the same thing happened.
That sounds like the problem is internal to the computer. The "barrel" type power connector you can see from the outside of the computer is soldered to a power board. With repeated stress on the connector over time, the little metal "legs" that support the conenctor on the board and also establish the electrical connection can work loose.
It's a fairly common failure in PowerBooks and likely a major reason Apple moved to the the "Mag-Safe" power conenctor on MacBooks and MacBook Pros when they replaced the older notebook series, the PowerBook and the iBook
The first thing to check is if the light comes back on if you GENTLY push the adaptor plug in different direction. If the light comes on when you push the connector up, that's a pretty reliable diagnostic for a loose connector.
People have successfully resoldered the connector to the board but the takeapart procedure for a PowerBook is not trivial and you need better-then average skill in soldering small, heat-sensitive components. Apple will no longer work comptuers older than about five years but you can probably find a third-party Apple Authorized Service Provider that still works on older Macs.
If you give us a general idea of where you are located, prehaps people here can refer you to a trusted service provider.
If you want to look at the step required to "DIY" and decide if this is a taks you can handle at home, here is a link to iluustrated service guides select teh one that most closely matches you PowerBook variant; the instructions are often different for PBs with different screen sizes.
I received your advice to find a local technician to do the repair and not try to do it myself, which I don't think I'm capable of. Thanks for your opinion and feed back. I plan to look for someone in Madison who is authorized by Apple to do repairs. Thanks,
Madison, WI? You have a lot of resourses.
I'm away from my desktop Mac with all the bookmanks today (spending time with brand-new granddaughter!). Let me look up some links when I get home. The nice thing about a notebook is that, shoud the best service provider turn out to be outside of your local area, the computer is easy to ship!
The wierdest thing happened. I took my old laptop to the Apple Store in Madison, and asked them to transfer data to new computer I bought iMac 27". I left it in store for around 4 hours and came back later to pick them both up. I took both home and the next day, yesterday, tried to start the laptop, which previously would not charge. I checked the bottom and all the green lights were lit. So, I turned it over and gently plugged in the power cord and the green light ring glowed green and didn't turn off. I then opened the case and pushed the power botton. The machine started up and the battery was registering at 100%. I couldn't believe my eyes, but over 24 hours later it's still running and no glitches. At least for the time being everything seems fine.
I did contact one of the repair businesses and they said it would cost between 100 & 300 dollars to trouble shoot and repair the laptop. I'm not going to go that route unless something goes wrong again. Thanks for responding. It helped.
I arrived here with the same problem: plug it in - there's no light on the adapter and the G4 not showing as charging. I tried the PMU reset, still didn't work. I was about to search online for a replacement adapter, when I decided to check the fuse built into the uk plug (on the adapter). I took it out, turned it around and tried again. It works! My next option was to check whether there was DC power coming out of the adapter, (using a multimeter) which would have indicated a problem with the machine.
This is a low tech idea that may help someone. I love this little machine, and still use it because of the software I have on it. Long may it continue to power up!
when power adapter port does not light up, can it be replaced?
