From: "Tim" <tjp314@pacbell.net>

Date: May 17, 2008 9:03:24 AM MDT

To: Astro_IIDC@yahoogroups.com

Subject: Sorta OT:  Powerbook G4 won't startup

Sorry for the OT post, but I'm stumped.

My powerbook G4 has "always" been a little troublesome.  It seems I've

had only 3 Macs between work and home use since 1984 that have had

puzzling, if infrequent, problems.

All three have periodically had the dreaded message "you need to

restart by holding down the power button for several seconds" come up.

This had been happening to me with the powerbook on about a weekly

basis, so I took it in to an Apple service store for repairs.  Problem

never went away, though it was less frequent.

2 nights ago, it happened again (after a few months of no problems). 

I used to be able to restart the machine by holding down the power

button to turn it off, then restarting it.  It would take up to

several minutes to restart, but seemed to be okay after that.

But this time, when I restart the computer, I get the gray screen with

the apple logo and the spinning gizmo for about a minute or two, then

the computer shuts itself down.  No "folder with a question mark"

icon.  It just won't boot up at all.

I haven't tried putting a system disk in the DVD drive yet, but I have

tried starting it as a "target" drive with a firewire cable connected

to my mini so I could run disk utility on it.  When I do that, I get a

message that it can't be repaired.

The powerbook only shows up in Disk Utility, not on the mini's

desktop, so I'm not even sure I could try copying the files onto my

external Lacie drive so I could start over with the powerbook setup

(or restore, I suppose).

Any suggestions?  is my drive or CPU toast?

It'd sure be nice to have it back running before I head off to RTMC

next week!

TIA,

-Tim.