A friend gave me a G3 iBook this afternoon.
It powered on earlier in the day 4 times in a 2 hour period.
I poked around the system, opening this and playing with that.
I shut it down and removed the AC adapter cable.

This evening I powered it up, it booted to the OS X splash screen. Fine. I reached over the top of the screen for something, bumping the top of the lid gently. Screen went black.
I closed the lid. On the front edge, a round white light is now pulsing slowly. Alternately brightening then fading. Is it sleeping. If it is how do I wake it. I tried restarting with the power button. No joy. I tried googling - only ads for G3 parts.
Help would be appreciated. TIA

Typically a keystroke or mouse movement will wake it.
You can wait for other answers.. but if the lid is up and it won't wake via kb or trackpad or mouse you may have to do a hard reset/restart.

Oh.. it may be pulsing and can't wake from sleep if the battery is nearly drained. Plug in charger??

"I reached over the top of the screen for something, bumping the top of the lid gently. Screen went black."

You may have inadvertently loosened/snapped a wire.

Good Point.
Those were the clamshells, right?

Reboot talks about how he's everywhere at once.
OK, Santa Claus.....

LOL. But Santa has good little helpers. It's been a while since the OP posted so I'm waiting on a reply to the two good responses to see if it's a hit and run.

I doubt that it was a clamshell since he had OSX installed on it. I bet it was the white ones.

I have 10.4.11 on my firewire clamshell, but the sleep light is on the back so the OP's is a white one.