Powerbook G3 Blank Screen After Sleep

[gratefulfred]

After installing 10.2 (currently running 10.2.8) my trusty Powerbook G3 (WallStreet, series II) developed a glitch with the screen power. Upon startup, the screen "lights" go out on the screen (though if held at the right angle and with the right light behind you, you can see that the LCD is working -- it's just not lit).

After startup, I can simply press the brightness button and the screen lights up again just fine.

However, if the computer goes to sleep, the screen once again fails to come up (and again, you can see the LCD is working fine, it's just not "lit up"). Only this time, pressing the brightness button has no effect -- I have to restart in order to get the screen to work properly again.

Thanks in advance,
>FPL

[RacerX]

Originally Posted by gratefulfred

After installing 10.2 (currently running 10.2.8) my trusty Powerbook G3 (WallStreet, series II)

Sadly, this is a known issue that started with 10.2.1.

There is a fix... but hardly one that I would be able to convey in a post. I've done it a few times (including on my system), so it does work.

Still, the best advice is to never sleep your system.

My system hasn't gone to sleep in almost 3 years. The hard drive spins down, the screen dims... but the system is awake 24/7 (mainly because I end up using it 24/7 and even if I'm not on it, I need to access it via my network from other systems).

Sorry this couldn't be more helpful.

[gratefulfred]

Thanks, Rx. At least I can stop trying to figure out what it is!

[lmart999]

Had the same problem, fix is actually easy:

It's evidently a known problem on Wallstreets running any version of OSX. The •only• fix, but a simple one, is to boot to 9.x, either from the HD if installed, or a pre-OSX CD, then simply reboot to to OSX.

See:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/we...bM.1@.68b7b87e

[gratefulfred]

I'll give that a try, thanks!

[RacerX]

Originally Posted by lmart999

It's evidently a known problem on Wallstreets running any version of OSX.

Sadly, this is not true... as I stated earlier, this started with version 10.2.1. No Wallstreet had exhibited this issue before that release (late September 2002). I was servicing 5 Wallstreets with 10.1.5 and earlier (starting with a handful running versions of Mac OS X Developer Previews and Mac OS X Server 1.x as early as 1999) that never showed any of these issues, and had stress tested my Wallstreet at 10.2.0 for 21 days without issue (it wasn't shut down or restarted at any point in that period, but was sleeped 2 or 3 times a day).

The issue first popped up on Apple's discussion boards with 10.2.1. But Apple doesn't keep discussions from that far back.

The •only• fix, but a simple one...

and is not permanent. The problems always seem to come back. It was one of the first suggestions back when this started with 10.2.1.

The •only• real fix that I know of required having a 10.2.0 installation to grab a file from to replace the same file in a 10.2.x installation. The procedure was posted in Apple's discussion forums back then... and is now lost because Apple doesn't archive those boards (and because I can't find the copy I had made of the steps).