Hi guys,
I've been trawling these forums on and off over the last several years but took the plunge to sign up seeing as my interest (and collection) in PowerPC based Macs has grown exponentially recently, and I'm amazed with the knowledge and help everyone here shares! Hoping to be part of this great community.
So on with my issue... I recently acquired a PowerBook G4 17" 1.67GHz (with DDR ram, not DDR2 as I've seen some have), in pretty much immaculate condition aside from the fact that when I turned it on, the left side fan was spinning very rapidly, very loudly and it was rather irritating. My immediate thought was "it's old, probably never been cleaned out, could be full of dust and the thermal compound has probably seen better days".
I took the machine apart carefully, removed the motherboard to find the thermal paste was not only like dry cement, but there wasn't even a trace of it ever being ON the processor or GPU die, more around it (even the heatsink surface had very little of the stuff on where the dies were supposed to sit). So, I cleaned it all off, reapplied the thermal compound, rebuilt the PowerBook, went to turn it on and ...No display. There was the Mac startup chime, but no display. I thought I may not have reseated the display connector, but then underneath the RAM cover I noticed a connector that, because of how it looked, assumed it was a display power connector (more on this in a moment). I unclipped it, reseated it, pressed the power button, and the startup chime played followed by the display working; Great! I thought.
Logged in to my user account, and when the icons appeared at the top right, there was no WiFi icon. So I open System Information, go to networking, and there's no airport device to be found. Nothing. I restarted the Mac, reset the SMC and PRAM, started it up again and still the exact same issue. Restarted the PowerBook again, this time booting from my Leopard disc and even that didn't show any network. I can't run Apple System Test because even though it came with the correct grey factory discs, it for some reason will kernel panic when trying to load it.
So I take the PowerBook apart again to see if I've negated to plug in the airport ribbon... But it turns out that connector under the RAM cover that I thought was a display power cable actually WAS the airport ribbon cable, situated below the PCMCIA slot. No amount of reseating and clearing PRAM or SMC resets are making airport work. So I removed the airport card completely (the ribbon cable is a part of it, it isn't separate from it on this one, part no. 603-6187). There appears to be a noticeable crease on the gold part of the ribbon cable itself, not sure if that may have split the internal wire traces, but I've ordered a replacement card anyway (the only one I could even find for sale on eBay UK) hoping that it may fix it... But I've heard horror stories of it being a logic board fault too, which I seriously hope it isn't. As I said, the WiFi was working fine before the strip down, then after the rebuilt wouldn't display anything until I reseated the airport card ribbon cable, to which it then had no WiFi at all.
The left fan is much, much quieter now, although still audible. It used to be really loud even from cold boot, and although now is much quieter it does still run at the current consistent speed from cold boot.
Any advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated. Really don't want to have an otherwise pristine PowerBook G4 17 hindered by lacking WiFi.
Thanks in advance!
I've been trawling these forums on and off over the last several years but took the plunge to sign up seeing as my interest (and collection) in PowerPC based Macs has grown exponentially recently, and I'm amazed with the knowledge and help everyone here shares! Hoping to be part of this great community.
So on with my issue... I recently acquired a PowerBook G4 17" 1.67GHz (with DDR ram, not DDR2 as I've seen some have), in pretty much immaculate condition aside from the fact that when I turned it on, the left side fan was spinning very rapidly, very loudly and it was rather irritating. My immediate thought was "it's old, probably never been cleaned out, could be full of dust and the thermal compound has probably seen better days".
I took the machine apart carefully, removed the motherboard to find the thermal paste was not only like dry cement, but there wasn't even a trace of it ever being ON the processor or GPU die, more around it (even the heatsink surface had very little of the stuff on where the dies were supposed to sit). So, I cleaned it all off, reapplied the thermal compound, rebuilt the PowerBook, went to turn it on and ...No display. There was the Mac startup chime, but no display. I thought I may not have reseated the display connector, but then underneath the RAM cover I noticed a connector that, because of how it looked, assumed it was a display power connector (more on this in a moment). I unclipped it, reseated it, pressed the power button, and the startup chime played followed by the display working; Great! I thought.
Logged in to my user account, and when the icons appeared at the top right, there was no WiFi icon. So I open System Information, go to networking, and there's no airport device to be found. Nothing. I restarted the Mac, reset the SMC and PRAM, started it up again and still the exact same issue. Restarted the PowerBook again, this time booting from my Leopard disc and even that didn't show any network. I can't run Apple System Test because even though it came with the correct grey factory discs, it for some reason will kernel panic when trying to load it.
So I take the PowerBook apart again to see if I've negated to plug in the airport ribbon... But it turns out that connector under the RAM cover that I thought was a display power cable actually WAS the airport ribbon cable, situated below the PCMCIA slot. No amount of reseating and clearing PRAM or SMC resets are making airport work. So I removed the airport card completely (the ribbon cable is a part of it, it isn't separate from it on this one, part no. 603-6187). There appears to be a noticeable crease on the gold part of the ribbon cable itself, not sure if that may have split the internal wire traces, but I've ordered a replacement card anyway (the only one I could even find for sale on eBay UK) hoping that it may fix it... But I've heard horror stories of it being a logic board fault too, which I seriously hope it isn't. As I said, the WiFi was working fine before the strip down, then after the rebuilt wouldn't display anything until I reseated the airport card ribbon cable, to which it then had no WiFi at all.
The left fan is much, much quieter now, although still audible. It used to be really loud even from cold boot, and although now is much quieter it does still run at the current consistent speed from cold boot.
Any advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated. Really don't want to have an otherwise pristine PowerBook G4 17 hindered by lacking WiFi.
Thanks in advance!