Problem with display on Wallstreet

[chinesewhispers]

Hi there

I am new to Macs, and so am acquiring 2nd user hardware to learn with, before spending too much.

I purchased a Wallstreet from eBay, which is mostly fine, needed a replacement battery which I have sourced. It came with 10.2 installed, but I have recently managed to get 10.3.9 working on it.

Just one problem though, and this exists with both OSes, and also in setup modes.

When the unit is first powered up, things are pretty much OK, though sometimes I have to press the brightness up/down button to get anything on display. The brightness is at maximum, and is fine after this has been pressed, but nothing is on screen until this has been done. In addition, if the power saving kicks in, and then woken up again, the screen is extremely dark, so much so that I have to shine a torch very close on to the screen in order to see what is there, and then shutdown, a restart from this point will return the OS with a dim screen.

Any suggestions? I will answer any questions you need answering, but I am not sure what info you will need me to provide.

Many thanks, apart from this (and needing a new hinge) the laptop is great for what I paid for it, especially now it is running Panther!

Regards

Mark

 

[mkrishnan]

If rebooting and/or adjusting the brightness always results in you getting back to a lit screen, then it seems like this is most likely an issue of the non-volatile memory (power management firmware, etc).

I think this is the procedure for your notebook:

1. If the computer is on, turn it off.

2. Make sure the Caps Lock key is not down.

3. Restart the computer. Immediately after hearing the startup sound, simultaneously press and hold Command-Option-P-R. (If you do not hold down the key combination within 5 to 10 seconds after the computer restarts, you must repeat steps 1-3.)

4. Hold down the keys until you hear the startup sound again. Then release the keys.

5. If the computer shuts itself off, press the reset button on the back of the computer to turn it back on.

6. When the computer has finished starting up, restore any custom settings for the desktop pattern, memory, network, AppleTalk, trackpad, power conservation, and so forth.

See this note for more details:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=14449#faq2

 

[chinesewhispers]

Hi mkrishnan

Thanks for the reply, I have tried that, in fact my model has the following:

PowerBook G3 Series (M4753)

1. If the computer is on, turn it off.
2. Simultaneously press Shift-Fn (function)-Ctrl (control)-Power.
3. Wait 5 seconds.
4. Press the Power button to restart the PowerBook computer.

For some reason it killed the system (wouldn't find the boot drive nad just gave a flashing disk icon with question mark) and I have had to reinstall. The same problem still occurs. A reboot leaves the screen dim, but a shutdown and power on brings the screen back to life.

I have just completed a reinstall of 10.1

Any other ideas, or is it something I will have to live with.

Thanks

Mark

 

[chinesewhispers]

OK, after going through several reinstalls, I am finding the problem that even though the main battery remains in the laptop, the clock keeps defaulting.

From my PC experience, this indicates a mainboard battery problem. I presume there is an equivalent on this Wallstreet (and could this be related to the problems I am having?)

Are these batteries end-user replaceable?

Thanks.