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G3 Pismo startup issue

petteri

Well-known member
I bought a third party power adapter to my G3 Pismo. I have no info of the history of the laptop but it looks somewhat worn. The screen plastics have couple cracks.

I plugged in the charger and pressed power button. There is no chime (loudspeaker or headphones. I can hear a little pop from the headphones when hitting the power button). The HD spins up but there is no activity after spin up noises. There is no picture or backlight on the screen. Keyboard caps and numlock lights work and the battery seems to start charging up (from empty to two three so far). The battery seems to gather enough charge to start up the machine.

Things tried so far:

Pressed the reset button

Removed PRAM battery

Plugged in VGA and tried to start up, no video on VGA either.

Removed DVD drive

Any advice?

 
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Byrd

Well-known member
Pull and reseat the CPU daughtercard, strip down to one known good working RAM module. Clean the connectors with electronic solvent cleaning spray 

 

petteri

Well-known member
I took the whole thing apart after RAM and CPU reseating exercise. The cap C67 next to the fan is slightly bulging from the top but no leaks. No cracks or burn marks anywhere on the PCBs. The only other part looking suspicious is the power card.

g3powercard.jpeg

 

petteri

Well-known member
This machine is driving me nuts. I put everything back together minus one T8 short screw, no clue where I left it out. And it started up with the chime. I plugged in the HD and restarted, now the OS started. Pretty good. I could see the battery meter was reading 2 hours, hard to believe that being really the condition of the battery. This has been in storage at least ten years.

Then I plugged in the PRAM battery and restarted from the menu. Everything fine. Shutdown, place the laptop on the table and start again. No chime. PRAM battery off, no chime. Main battery out for a moment and then back. No chime.

So I had this working for five minutes and then back to zero. 

Couple options... 

 - There is some bad connector or solder somewhere that got upset while I moved the laptop.

 - The PRAM battery managed to mess up something and I need to wait that something to lose its state

 - ??? 

pismoup.jpeg

 

petteri

Well-known member
I think there is a bad connector, solder or trace somewhere. I managed to get the chime and screen on once more but after a little shaking screen went black. Power card, sound card or the logic board?

 

rplacd

Well-known member
I have a Pismo with exactly the same symptoms... for what it's worth, a sound card/DC-in swap didn't work for me, so maybe it's best to focus on the logic board and power card first. Would be very interested in any progress that you make!

 
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petteri

Well-known member
I have a Pismo with exactly the same symptoms... for what it's worth, a sound card/DC-in swap didn't work for me, so maybe it's best to focus on the logic board and power card first. Would be very interested in any progress that you make!
Hopefully I will receive some Pismo parts in couple of weeks time. I think Pismo should give a chime without a working display inverter board, modem or hard drive so I can rule those out. Actually a better bottom case with a working logic board would be nice as this one looks like it has been left on a kitchen hot plate...

 
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petteri

Well-known member
Alright, I got some parts. Something like 5 G3 Pismos in various levels of destruction. Some should boot but have broken screens etc. The guy I fetched them from said I should be able to get at least one working Pismo out of those. Let's see... Oh, and I got also two IIcx more (logic board and case only) but that is a different story.

 

petteri

Well-known member
There seems to be both 400MHz and 500MHz CPUs but without memory. Two working HDs, couple good looking screens and cases and keyboards. But no batteries or Airport cards at all.

117186790_10158140677666849_5758332377071640284_o.jpg

 

petteri

Well-known member
Some results of the Pismo sorting session:

  • 5 CPUs but only 2 are ok. All of them boot but all 500MHz models do not have sound and seem to be unstable. The faulty 400Mhz has distorted sound and crashes. I guess there isn't anything I could do with them?
  • 3 nice working screens with good inverters.
  • 2-3 good logic board + power&sound card combos.

I wish I could get one of the 500MHz CPUs working but I have no clue what to do with them.

 

petteri

Well-known member
Excellent news. After a countryside weekend I had a new attempt with Pismo. First I had a better look with memory chips and found out I actually had 512MB + 128 MB combo available. Then I wanted to see whether the heatsink makes any difference. Apparently 500MHz CPU doesn't want even to boot  without heatsink. I must have spent too much time with old II series Macintoshes...

So, I put everything together and tightened screws. Now it booted up nice, no chime though. After OS 9 loaded I could verify CPU speed and memory. Now sound worked fine. Then a reboot with chime. Great! As I have plenty of Pismo parts I was able to choose nicer looking plastics and even have all fours bottom rubber pads :)

The old 6 GB HD had a German OS X 10.1 installed as well so I booted there. Everything seems to work, DVD drive is fine but the biggest surprise was the battery. Two batteries are totally dead and not accepting any charge. But third one reports over two hours on OS X 10.1. I have to try that out whether it really can do two hours on battery power. 

Next thing would be to find a 802.11g & WPA compatible wlan card. Also, replacing old 6GB HD with SSD could be nice.

There is still a big pile of Pismo parts, I'll have a look if I am able to put together one more working unit.

20200816_230827.jpg

20200816_230843.jpg

20200816_230858.jpg

 

petteri

Well-known member
Another 500Mhz Pismo built from pile of spares with 192MB RAM and 10GB HD. Similar condition outside but keyboard is very worn. I have couple broken keyboards, I wonder if it is worth of the effort try to replace keycaps. The scissor mechanism looks somewhat fragile.

I could possibly build third one but I am lacking display hinge screws :-(

 
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