I purchased my Powerbook 540c secondhand about 4 years ago, powered it on once, then put it in storage. In search of a new hobby, I pulled the 540c back out and decided to start tinkering around with it [getting AppleTalk to function, updating System 7.5, etc] and had it powered on for roughly 7-8 hours with moderate intervals of downtime yesterday. Today, I booted it back up, started my dedicated Netatalk/AppleTalk VM to move some files over, and as I opened Chooser, the screen froze, with different colored lines and portions of the screen that were completely white. It had done this briefly the day before when booting, but seemed to be resolved when applying the slightest amount of pressure on the main display cable for a split second. So I tried this again, thinking the cable connection was weak, but nothing happened; the screen remained frozen. The Powerbook itself was still on and chimed when I attempted to click around. Restarting the Powerbook [ctrl + cmd + power] turned the screen off for a moment, chimed, then brought the same frozen, washed out, and partially white screen as before. I could even still see portions of the Chooser menu and the desktop background.
I then decided to unplug the machine for a bit and power it back on. This time I heard the initial startup chime, the screen backlight turned on, and then the screen [very] slowly began to fade in [almost the opposite of lcd tunnel vision], all white, with some green lines and a teal 3-inch bar on the left and right sides of the screen. If I rebooted, the screen refreshed but the artifacts or abnormalities remained. The same symptoms [with lines and bars in different areas] were experienced if I unplugged it and powered on the device. It still boots into System 7.5, as I can hear the warning chime that appears due to a IOmega Extension failing to initialize [came installed on the Powerbook without the IOmega drive itself
].
Has anyone else experienced this before on a 540c or different Powerbook? Is this an issue with the intermediate board or the mainboard? Possibly a failing cap? I didn't capture a photo the first time it did this, but I was able to record a video after the fact. I normally have the cover on, but removed it to reseat the screen cable after it first happened. I've reviewed some of the other threads but haven't seen something that quite fits this issue. Again, I had this machine on for roughly 7-8 hours the day before [not constantly, I shut it down when I wasn't needing to test something] and it was fine.
I then decided to unplug the machine for a bit and power it back on. This time I heard the initial startup chime, the screen backlight turned on, and then the screen [very] slowly began to fade in [almost the opposite of lcd tunnel vision], all white, with some green lines and a teal 3-inch bar on the left and right sides of the screen. If I rebooted, the screen refreshed but the artifacts or abnormalities remained. The same symptoms [with lines and bars in different areas] were experienced if I unplugged it and powered on the device. It still boots into System 7.5, as I can hear the warning chime that appears due to a IOmega Extension failing to initialize [came installed on the Powerbook without the IOmega drive itself
].Has anyone else experienced this before on a 540c or different Powerbook? Is this an issue with the intermediate board or the mainboard? Possibly a failing cap? I didn't capture a photo the first time it did this, but I was able to record a video after the fact. I normally have the cover on, but removed it to reseat the screen cable after it first happened. I've reviewed some of the other threads but haven't seen something that quite fits this issue. Again, I had this machine on for roughly 7-8 hours the day before [not constantly, I shut it down when I wasn't needing to test something] and it was fine.
