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Powerbook 180 dead display?

Lobo

Member
Hi.

Got a Powerbook 180 and it is not showing anything on the screen:

IMG_9080.JPG

I've searched in the forum and I've found this user with the same issue: 





I've also read that it may be an issue with bad capacitors and I have seen some people replacing the caps in other Powerbooks of the 100s series (nothing on the 180). I have disassembled the display and this one doesn't look like the ones I've seen that people fix, I can't find the capacitors

fullsizeoutput_23e9.jpeg

I have checked the cables for continuity and everything seems fine.

Any ideas??

Thanks :)

 
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sutekh

Well-known member
Be oh so very careful with that ribbon cable! Ask me how I know... Caps may be on the back if you remove the display from the back cover. That's how to access them on a 180c anyway...

Do you get any other signs of life? Power-up chimes? Disk activity? What power adapter are you using and can it provide at least 2A @ 7.5v?

 

Lobo

Member
Yeah, that ribbon cable seems very fragile... it was the first thing I tested for continuity expecting one of the paths to be broken. But it seems all good.
I removed the display from the plastic cover and it's a huge PCB, but no signs of caps in the back. Or do you mean I should remove the actual display from that big PCB?

I don't get any signals, nope. The disk is disconnected at the moment. I think it's broken because I saw some corrosion in the connector, so I just disconnected it. Even without the hard drive, it should show something, right??
I'm using a 7.5V 2.1A power adaptor. The original one was not working either :(

Thanks for the answer :)

 

Papichulo

Well-known member
the post you quoted i had a issue with ended up being a dead backlight bulb and tunnelling problem the best way is to find a parts 180 and just replace the screen. also that 180 just didnt work at all the board was fried somebody fried the board plugging in wrong voltage i think. active matrix screens dont have capacitor issues

 

sutekh

Well-known member
the post you quoted i had a issue with ended up being a dead backlight bulb and tunnelling problem the best way is to find a parts 180 and just replace the screen. also that 180 just didnt work at all the board was fried somebody fried the board plugging in wrong voltage i think. active matrix screens dont have capacitor issues
I was glad to benefit from some of your extra parts as a result :) One point of clarification though: Greyscale active matrix screens don't have capacity issues. The color screen in the 180c has many, and all of mine were in sad shape.

 

Papichulo

Well-known member
it does not make any sound, nope :/

one thing I found weird is: I was checking this iFixit guide and saw that RAM module that mine doesn't have. Is it needed or am I actually missing parts???
i dont know. but sounds like it is just bad (somebody probably plugged in the wrong voltage). and whatever is salvageable you can i guess scrap it and get a new 180? it doesnt need ram to turn on. 

 

Andy

Well-known member
I have a 180 that is doing the same thing. However, I don't think it's the screen that's bad. When i turn it on i get the screen with the horizontal lines, and no sound. If i press the reset button then the lines will change and i can also hear the hard drive spin up and seek. I tried powering it on and off for a while then just as i was about to give up I heard a loud BONG and the computer started up fine!! I started copying my cousins old files off it, but after about an hour it froze and went back to the screen with lines.

My first suspicion was a power adapter not providing enough power, but i tried an adjustable supply I had lying around and got the same result. I opened up the bottom and the main and daughter boards look fine. No corrosion or leaky caps. The battery seems fully dead, and i see there is a pram battery inside. It doesn't look like it's leaked, but would having a dead pram battery cause a problem?

I think my next steps are to remove the ram board, cause it's easy. And try taking out the inverter board and look at the pram battery and see if there's an easy way to remove that.

 

Lobo

Member
I have a 180 that is doing the same thing. However, I don't think it's the screen that's bad. When i turn it on i get the screen with the horizontal lines, and no sound. If i press the reset button then the lines will change and i can also hear the hard drive spin up and seek. I tried powering it on and off for a while then just as i was about to give up I heard a loud BONG and the computer started up fine!! I started copying my cousins old files off it, but after about an hour it froze and went back to the screen with lines.

My first suspicion was a power adapter not providing enough power, but i tried an adjustable supply I had lying around and got the same result. I opened up the bottom and the main and daughter boards look fine. No corrosion or leaky caps. The battery seems fully dead, and i see there is a pram battery inside. It doesn't look like it's leaked, but would having a dead pram battery cause a problem?

I think my next steps are to remove the ram board, cause it's easy. And try taking out the inverter board and look at the pram battery and see if there's an easy way to remove that.
Interesting.

To be honest I didn't think it was the main boards because they look pristine:

I was also worried about the pram battery, but I don't think it can cause that problem, right? hmmm

IMG_9086.JPG

IMG_9087.JPG

IMG_9090.JPGIMG_9088.JPGIMG_9089.JPG

I'll check the main boards better in case I can find something wrong.

 
Last edited by a moderator:

Lobo

Member
Just an update on this:
 

I kept persevering and I got it working!

I tried many different things really.
I saw that the terminals where the battery gets connected were a bit corroded so I desoldered it to see if there was any damage under it.
I couldn't see much but when I put it under the microscope I saw one path that was not looking very good. I tested it for continuity and nothing! Damn finally something that got me excited and got me to hope that it could be fixed.
 

So I fixed:
IMG_9170.JPG

Screenshot 2020-09-15 at 22.35.47.png

Not the finest job I have to admit, but good enough to make it work!! I got so happy when I turned on without the display and I heard the startup chime through the speaker  :)

AB7C7940-F276-41F2-B654-F14EC8D4391F.jpg

Now, the next chapter is to figure out how to actually get the OS to work lol

 

bigD

Well-known member
Nicely done sir! Incidentally my 180c's screen just went bad today, with increasing noise everywhere. Gotta open her up and see what's up.

 

Andy

Well-known member
Oh that's great news! I will look for the issue on my board too. I haven't worked on my broken 180 much recently, excited to see if i have the same problem.

 

bigD

Well-known member
I opened up my 180c today to fix a display issue and found this by the battery terminals. Lots of blue!

Once I got everything clean it looked pretty good, but although I didn’t have the issue that you had, it was nice to go in there and clean all that garbage out.

BAB6311E-2542-476F-A371-5D2071F2B91C.jpeg

 

Lobo

Member
I opened up my 180c today to fix a display issue and found this by the battery terminals. Lots of blue!

Once I got everything clean it looked pretty good, but although I didn’t have the issue that you had, it was nice to go in there and clean all that garbage out.

View attachment 37334
Yeah, that looks quite nasty. I wouldn't be surprise if there are broken traces on the board due to that corrosion.
Last week I got a 145B looking like that one (or worse) and it had some broken traces:

IMG_9215.JPG

 

bigD

Well-known member
Yeah, that looks quite nasty. I wouldn't be surprise if there are broken traces on the board due to that corrosion.
Last week I got a 145B looking like that one (or worse) and it had some broken traces:

View attachment 37538


Wow - that's ugly! I didn't see any obvious broken traces on mine, although I didn't desolder the power contacts to check underneath. My 180c doesn't seem to have any obvious issues beyond a little ghosting of the screen (likely due to failing caps), so I left well enough alone. It doesn't run off of battery power, but that's pretty par for the course, and the 180c wasn't good for much beyond an hour even back in the day!

 
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