Hey guys. I have an old clamshell iBook SE FireWire I got off a friend. For some reason, though, it refuses to charge. It runs off of battery fine, but that'll give me like 3 hours of life... woo! I'm not sure if its a DC Board problem or a charger problem, and I tried unplugging/replugging it a kazillion times. Is there an easy (or not) way to figure it out?
first question. Does the DC port light up when you plug in the adapter? If so, does it glow green, orange, or red? Orange and red look similar.
The first fault isolation step would be to try another 45 watt power adapter, then to make sure the battery is good. After that, you'd be replacing the DC-IN board, since those die eventually. Most likely though, it isnt a logic board.
If you plan to get it repaired, I'd expect a decent shop to charge you probably about $25 for the DC board, and around $75 for labor.
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Electricity tastes good. No, seriously.
I have a dual usb ibook with the saucer adapter and it doesn't light up but charges up just fine... go figure... try resetting the PMU and a different battery...
Ah ha. I completely forgot about the PMU. I don't have an extra battery... I got this laptop second hand a while ago, and mostly used it plugged into the wall, until I moved on to a Cube. I'll go try that now, and post my results.
Reseting the PMU didn't help at all. I did it about 3 or 4 times, and the same thing each time. However, I was finally able to borrow a spare power adapter from a friend and I ruled that out as the problem. It's also not a battery problem since it runs off of battery fine. Definitely seems like a DC Board problem now (I might have shorted it out...). Time to check the Trading Warehouse!