3lectr1cPPC
Well-known member
So, I went to fire up my PowerBook 5300ce today and it wouldn't start. I took it apart and reseated the DC in board, RAM expansion card, and the hard drive but no dice. Totally dead without any speaker pops or sound of any kind. I left it plugged in for a while while I went to do something and then came back and tried to turn it on again, suspecting a weak cap somewhere. Sure enough, I heard a little pop when I pressed the power button. Then I hit CMD-CTRL-PWR to reset the machine and it chimed and instantly sprang to life. No instabilities, no issues after that. Strangely enough, after it started up the system folder quit booting on my drive, and I had to rescue it with a CF card in a PCMCIA adapter. Luckily I did have a backup on that card, but my boot folder of OS 8.1 wouldn't even mount my partition! I was able to initialize the drive and then it worked fine again... So, I left it unplugged for a while again after that and tried to start it again. During this time I also left the adapter unplugged as a test, and sure enough it wouldn't start. So I left it plugged in again and around 2-3 minutes later it automatically started up (both main and PRAM batteries are removed). This time things only got stranger. It starting booting off of my CF card again and it froze while getting to the desktop. So I reset with the key combo again and pulled the card out. Sad Mac. Full on chimes of death. I figured it was because I pulled the card out while it was accessing something on it so I reset again. Sad Mac. I pulled the plug and starting again, still sad mac! So, I put my card reader back in the PCMCIA slot and it started booting again but froze on the "Welcome to Mac OS" screen. Another reboot... Now it starts to boot again and freezes while loading extensions. I then tried to start with extensions off and got a bus error. Yikes.
So, in summary, something keeps corrupting any boot drive I have hooked up to the laptop. (The first time this happened I didn't have the CF drive attached), and my formerly stable PowerBook now has issues starting up. The obvious thing to look for is a bad cap somewhere on the DC board, or the power supply, so to check which is at fault I'm going to unplug the laptop for a while but leave the PSU plugged in to hopefully narrow down what component is causing the problem.
Also, what the heck keeps corrupting my boot drives? I was able to restart the thing multiple times after reformatting the HDD without any issues. It was only after losing power that this issue occurs.
Update: It appears to be the power supply. I still don't know what keeps corrupting my drives though.
So, in summary, something keeps corrupting any boot drive I have hooked up to the laptop. (The first time this happened I didn't have the CF drive attached), and my formerly stable PowerBook now has issues starting up. The obvious thing to look for is a bad cap somewhere on the DC board, or the power supply, so to check which is at fault I'm going to unplug the laptop for a while but leave the PSU plugged in to hopefully narrow down what component is causing the problem.
Also, what the heck keeps corrupting my boot drives? I was able to restart the thing multiple times after reformatting the HDD without any issues. It was only after losing power that this issue occurs.
Update: It appears to be the power supply. I still don't know what keeps corrupting my drives though.