Whats happened to my iBook G4?

[SuperToaster]

So I guess I should try different installation media I guess. The Leopard installation from USB failed and got stuck. Will find another Tiger DVD.

 

[SuperToaster]

But in this installation the mouse pointer is the only thing thats ok

 

[techknight]

the GPU is bad. I just have a feeling. 

there are multiple routines and calls that a GPU can make, and they take different paths in the core to render things. for example, drawing, sprite rendering, 2D rendering, 3D rendering, simple framebuffering are all different. 

if you have stock installation media, and its not working, replace the logic board. 

In a rare case, if the GPU shares its graphics RAM from the system RAM, try swapping the system RAM. 

 

[Cory5412]

Techknight is almost certainly correct. I'm approximately 97% certain. The only solution is to bake the motherboard or replace it. This type of failure was common in a few generations of iBook G4, and the Radeon varieties of iBook G3.

All iBooks use discrete GPUs, so replacing system RAM likely will not do anything for this particular issue.

 

[SuperToaster]

I have another possibility: I did install tiger on it and it barely displays any info on the graphics hardware, display settings are stuck at 1024 by 768 and at 256 colors, although in gray scale. Missing video driver? Where could I get one? I don't know where I could get an iBook G4 .kext file... Otherwise I guess I'm just probably avoiding the inevitable...

 

[SuperToaster]

I will probably just open it up and bake it if I can open the damned thing...

 

[SuperToaster]

It fixed itself. GPU is failing.

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

That's the unfortunate legacy of the iBooks, apart from the clamshells.

 

[techknight]

Unfortunately these days, GPUs are crap. I am sure there are quite a few good ones, but it seems in laptops they just dont hold up. 

I got 2 2012 macbooks here with shot GPUs. 

 

[SuperToaster]

At least I got the 2005 iBook G4 1.42 Ghz with 512 MB of RAM and a 60 GB hard drive  

 

[Macdrone]

Well just be wary as the airport can fail, and cause kernel panics. That's one of my next projects is baking the iBook to fix that.

 

[68kAlex]

It's definitely the GPU. I had two machines with this fault back when they were new.