Powerbook G3 won't start/boot?

[Sigman]

Got hold of an Apple Powerbook G3 (bronze keyboard) that won't start/boot. I've been through the WWW looking at troubleshooting hints & tips - but none seem to work.

AC adapter works, green light comes on while it just starts to boot, then goes out & it doesn't continue to boot.

Fidgeting with it, I can get it to try a little harder & even get a start up tone (I guess...1 beep?), then it shuts down. Nothing on the monitor at all (though it almost looks like it's trying to light up - just before it shuts down. Keep in mind I know NOTHING about anything Apple at all.

"IF" I can even get it to boot up, what could I use it for? It only has a 4gb HD...and AGAIN - I KNOW NOTHING (did I say NOTHING?) about APPLE!!

Help, any hints, surefire (ha a flashlight pun) tips on how to fire this thing up?

 

[ElectronGuru]

There are two bronze G3 models

Lombard: usb + scsi
http://lowendmac.com/pb2/lombard.shtml

Pismo: usb + firewire
http://lowendmac.com/pb2/pismo.shtml


Either is easy to upgrade, if you can get it working. Check out the second paragraph:
http://www.wallawalla.edu/frohro/Powerbook/Pismo/Battery/


Then try resetting the pram and pmu. Then get yourself new ram, new HD, and new software
http://www.transintl.com/store/category.cfm?Category=844

http://cgi.ebay.com/Apple-Mac-OS-X-...ryZ80258QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem


Add a wireless card and battery and it makes a great web browser
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/powerbook/battery/g3-pismo/

 

[IsaacHayes]

Is the CPU fan spinning up? If not then it might shut it self off when it detects it's not spinning.

 

[James S]

nice old machine, I still have one of those on the shelf in my office, keep meaning to mount it in a picture frame and make a slide show machine...

I'm pretty sure these machines had a backup nvram battery like most motherboards do, and if that goes dead then they can refuse to boot... But you can reset most of the other boot related settings by trying to boot the thing into open firmware and resetting all the nvram.

you do that by holding 4 keys down at startup: command-option-O and F (OF for open firmware) all together. If the machine is working at all you should get a command line prompt. type:

reset-all[return]
and then bye[return] and it will try to reboot. If it still doesn't, or if that changes what happens, post again and we'll see what we can dredge up from there!

Good Luck,

 

[louie]

One beep? If you don't get the recognizable start chord, beeps are error codes:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58183

1 beep = No RAM installed/detected
2 beeps = Incompatible RAM type installed (for example, EDO)
3 beeps = No RAM banks passed memory testing
4 beeps = Bad checksum for the remainder of the boot ROM
5 beeps = Bad checksum for the ROM boot block

Some folks still like these machines for basic use or specific OS9 apps, but they are a little under-powered for my tastes.