Black screen on my powerbook G4

Question

Level 1

8 points

Black screen on my powerbook G4

Hi folks,

I have had my powerbook G4 for nearly 8 years and have had almost no problems with it. I have replaced the battery once, the keyboard once, upgraded the ram, and upgraded the os to the highest that can be run on powerpc processors: 10.5.8.

However, today I was organizing photos when suddenly the screen went black; the computer was still running and I could tell the screen was on, but I could not get any response. I rebooted and heard the chime and the hardrive but still no screen. I then tried several resets which allowed me to get the screen back but after 20min or so of use it goes black again everytime. This happens while the computer is plugged in. Do I need a new battery, a new screen, or is not worth putting more money into it? Thanks!

PowerBook, Mac OS X (10.5.8)

Posted on Jul 20, 2013 11:55 AM

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Answer 1

Jul 20, 2013 12:56 PM in response to JSB9

Hello and welcome to the Support Community

Sounds a very similar problem to the PowerBook I just recently acquired.

I posted this https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5174181?answerId=22497352022#22497352022

For me I found that leaving it off for long period would give me about 20-30 of use before the screen went blank.

After testing a lot of thing, I came to the conclusion that the problem was due to over heating. This was effecting the GPU (Graphic Processor Unit) I tested the tempriture and no sooner it reached a respectable 50'C the screen would go black ad keyboard become unresponsive.

I resolved this problem after many late nights and many hours of testing.

For my PowerBook the heat sink was not effective. (don't think it was making full contact between the heat skink and processor)

I stripped it down and clean the dried thin amount of heat sink compound off the processors and heat sink.

Had to straighten out the heat sink a tiny bit, as I suspected over time it had become warped.

Placed some new heat sink compound (thermo paste) onto both the processors and heat sink.

replaced the logic board. Success. I could only assume that over time the heat sink compound has dried and the heat sink warped a little, making it no longer become effective. I don't know if it had difficulties reducing the heat diapason. Cleaning, straightening, reseating and apply fresh compound has so far made everything work fine. I've had the unit working over 24 hours running all kinds of applications and successfully it hasn't had that problem again. Even the fan cut in when it gets a little warm now.

I don't know if this will help you.

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Answer 2

Jul 21, 2013 12:42 PM in response to JSB9

Have you:

Reset the power manager by pressing the key combination Control-Option-Shift-Power.

Reset PRAM (Press the power button, then hold down the Option-Command-P-R

keys until you hear the startup chime at least one additional time after the initial

startup chime).

 Cheers, Tom 😉

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Answer 3

JSB9 Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 22, 2013 11:32 AM in response to JSB9

Thanks to both of you. I have tried the resets with no luck but have not attempted to check the heat sink yet. However, I am no getting a fragmented screen and error messages in other languages so I'm afraid it may be more serious, and not worth the money for a fix.

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Answer 4

Jul 22, 2013 1:51 PM in response to JSB9

What PB G4 model do you have?

Send me an email to caltx (at) flash.net I have some more info that may be useful that I can send you.

 Cheers, Tom 😉

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Answer 5

Jul 24, 2013 5:56 AM in response to JSB9

Hello,

The fragmented display after a short while, was what happened to mine too.

I believe that was down to the GPU getting hot.

So far since my repair, everything work fine. 🙂

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