Powerbook G4 12" (A1010) blank screen

Question

Level 1

8 points

Powerbook G4 12" (A1010) blank screen

After powering on, the machine chimes and after a short while screen's backlight turns on but the screen stays black. When an external monitor is connected, the image can be seen on the external monitor.

Googling shows that many have fixed this error by resetting PRAM. That didn't work for me.

Here's a video of the symptom: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ooyFBf8KdzA

The screen appears to be gray on the video while it's actually black. The gray color is produced by the LCD backlight and the screen appears actually black when looking it on normal daylight. I filmed on a very dark room to see if/when the backlight turns on.

Could it be a bad cable?

PowerBook, Mac OS X (10.3.x)

Posted on Jul 5, 2015 6:47 AM

Reply

Answer 1

hennotaht Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 5, 2015 7:16 AM in response to hennotaht

Now, after I have left on its own it for some time, I noticed that the screen started flickering:

http://youtu.be/aRdRTpEZV0w

After trying to move the screen up and down I noticed that the flickering goes worse when the screen is more to the closed position and better when it's opened to the max (altough it won't go away completely). The colors are bad too.

This refers most probably to an issue with the video data cable?

Reply

Answer 2

hennotaht Author

Level 1

8 points

Jul 5, 2015 9:18 AM in response to hennotaht

Now, after I have left it flickering for an hour or so, I noticed that the screen did not flicker anymore. I tried rebooting and everything works. I also tried shutting it down for a while. It is still working. What could have been the reason that the screen did not work? Did it run so long that it melted down some bad solders until they made contact again? 🙂

Reply