G4 Cube, power button led weirdness

I recently picked up a nice Cube, was holding out for one with good plastics for a long time, and finally picked up a good one. It needs a little work, optical drive is dead, no hd, but it boots.

One thing that has me stumped is the power button led. When I first turned it on, it started right up, but there was no white light coming from the power button. I assumed the led was dead and thought no more of it.

However, I pulled the core out and hooked it up on the bench to work on some other stuff, and lo and behold the led works fine when it's out of the shell. I put it back in the shell, and sure enough no light from the led. Out of the shell again, and once again the led lights up perfectly.

What gives?

When I owned a cube back in the day the LED was the only thing that required replacement by Apple. I suspect some kind of capacitive effect when in the shell. I don't have one to look at but are there any components in or related to the LED that you could replace, electrolytic especially?

See if you can access CubeOwner via the Wayback archive, some power buttons were overly sensitive or others not very responsive at all, like yours. I recall people installing shims in the button to improve sensitivity, also check the internal frame is fully screwed in (if not aligned properly the power button won't function well inside the perspex enclosure).

aeberbach said:

When I owned a cube back in the day the LED was the only thing that required replacement by Apple. I suspect some kind of capacitive effect when in the shell. I don't have one to look at but are there any components in or related to the LED that you could replace, electrolytic especially?

Click to expand...

No electrolytics on there that I can see...

Byrd said:

See if you can access CubeOwner via the Wayback archive, some power buttons were overly sensitive or others not very responsive at all, like yours. I recall people installing shims in the button to improve sensitivity, also check the internal frame is fully screwed in (if not aligned properly the power button won't function well inside the perspex enclosure).

Click to expand...

Just to clarify, the power button works perfectly, not overly sensitive or insensitive, seems totally fine.

It's specifically the led that doesn't work when the shell is fitted...

Well, it works now. I have no idea why

I removed the inner shell from the outer shell and cleaned everything and put it back to together...

Hmm possible the plug was loose for it from the last time someone had it apart. Not tons of slack on that little cable. Glad it's working now.

I doubt it, I had the cable disconnected and reconnected multiple times at both ends while I was messing with it. A mystery!