Yea, I took the display off and took it apart and it appears that the previous owner tried to fix it them selves. The flex cable has a tear in it from where they tried to force it out but gave up? idk but it looks like I need a new flex cable.
So I go to work today and my co-worker gives me this to have... (imported from here) This thing is a MONSTER! It's a 17" HP Pavilion zd7000. It has a really nice Pentium 4 processor with hyper threading (Basically makes the computer think its a dual core) running at 3.07Ghz. It has an 80GB HDD, 768MB of ram, DVD/RW & CD/RW drive, and built in Wifi. This computer was definitely running against the PowerBook G4. Now before you say "DAT THING IZ LIKES SOOOOO OLD!", let me tell you that I used Pentium 4 processors up untill 2012 (yeah shut up), and the last of the Pentium 4 HT processors were actually really great. My old Pentium 4 rig could actually play GTA 4 and LFD2 at playable framerates (GTA at like 18 and LFD at 28). This rig is actually very powerful and I will probably set it up for my family to use since our other computer is dying.
Hahaha this should just be renamed to random pc talk. And yes those hp's are really nice. They are ugly as hell but they are really nice.
So I finally got everything needed to start the computer up! The only thing I was waiting on was the ram, so I put it in and hit the power button. I was so excited, but that all went away when it didn't power on. I was very confused. I switched around the ram chips, un-plugged and plugged back in the charger, but nothing. So I turned to the Internet for answers. A few hours later, I found out that I had purchased the wrong A/C adapter. The one I have is only a 45W model, when this model required the 65W charger. So I had to order another charger. And the waiting game continues...
suggestion (ignore if you did do this) is always always double check (or triple check) to make sure you buy the correct parts when buying parts for computer's, or really anything actually (especially vehicles), but that sucks about the charger being the wrong one
Yeah I search "PowerBook G4 A1138" to make sure I get the right parts. Especially when I search for the LCD, because they only used the HD LCD in this model of the 15" PowerBook.
So I got the new charger today and the system turned on! But it gave me error beeps and won't boot... It seems that there is problems with the ram. I don't know if this ram isn't compatible, or the slots are not working. So I bought 2 sticks of ram for this thing. Each are 1GB sticks. Here is what happens: Both ram sticks in = 1 beep (Means "no ram installed") 1 stick in either slot = 3 beeps (Means "no good banks") (no good banks means no good ram slots) So I don't know if its the ram or what. If the slots are dead, the whole project is dead... If the ram is not right, I may still have a chance...
I have been asking questions on Apple forums/websites and they all say that its because it is PC2-4200 ram, not PC4200. I have somebody on the forum who is willing to ship me a 1GB OEM stick of ram. So hopefully it works out.
Nice. I had a Compaq Presario R3000 that would smoosh that thing. It had a 1920x1200 LCD, a desktop grade P4 3.2GHz with HT, 2GB DDR, 64MB ATI Radeon card which I overclocked, etc. The thing was top of the line in 2003 and it cost about 3 grand new. I got it for $100 with 2 other Inspirons. (All it needed was a new DC jack.) Last year I got a iBook G4 at a tag sale for 25 bucks with a slightly broken Apple keybaord I'm typing on right now. It was the plastic kind and I think it was 1.2GHz or something. I had a bit of fun overclocking the GPU in an attempt to get it to be able to play YouTube videos with no unbearable lag. (I failed.) I did try to install Linux but I couldn't do it. There were limited things I could do with it since it was a PowerPC CPU which basically nothing has supported for a decade. Anyway, I tore it apart to see if I could mod the heatsink like I've done with my current Latitude E6500 but for some reason Apple used some weird bolt/screws on the heatsink. I managed to rip the power button socket out of the board trying to unplug it. I didn't want to fix it so I tore off all the usable parts and threw it out.
i play beamng on a pentium 4 dual core. it does pretty well! on topic i hope replacing the ram will fix the mac. i have some laptop ram although they are mostly 512 mb, so they are not ideal for what you are doing
New ram has been ordered! I have been talking to someone on a PowerPC Mac forum, and I have bought 2GB of DDR2 PC4200 ram from them. The ram should most defiantly positively absolutely work, because it came right out of the same model PowerBook as the one I am working on (A1138)! So if this doesn't work, I will probably shoot myself and commit suicide... Lol! But there really is no reason it shouldn't work. Anyways, I should probably sleep now since I have been up for nearly 40 hours...
It's alive!!! The computer turns on with the ram!!! It boots to OS X Leopard, but no icons show up. I'm guessing that the OS is corrupt. I am going to do some more troubleshooting tomorrow. Right now I am too tired...
