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Posted by Many on May 8, 2005 at 10:59 pm

Hello.

Had and accident with my powerbook g4 were something heavy felt on top. The screen is broken, that I know, inside it looks like just the hard drive took the hit and the rest looks ok. Will an external monitor work if the Hard drive doesn’t? Right now I have it open, I inserted the reinstalation cd and the computer look like is on, the cd makes a sound like back and forth, the logic board gets warm and I even get something on the display but can’t tell what because is broken but I see the light behind. I tried connecting a dell monitor dvi but don’t get anything in it.

Trying to determing if its just HD or more that is damage.

Thinking on two option:
1- buy a cheap HD and try it on
2- but another powerbook and use it to acces the broken one

Maybe I can still save it and use with external monitor.

Any sugestions?
will an external monitor work with a broken HD?

sorry if this is not the right forum.

Thank you, thank you.
many

Many replied 21 years ago 3 Members · 4 Replies
4 Replies

Mrvideo
May 9, 2005 at 2:31 pm

You have some decisions to make. You Powerbook is virtually useless to you with a cracked display. The was probably more extensive damage to it as well.

My suggestion is to take it to an Apple dealer and get a quote for repair. If the cost to repair exceeds the cost of a new one – well, there’s your answer.

Trying to use it in a broken state is just going to be more frustrating than it’s worth.
Many
May 9, 2005 at 11:47 pm

Thanks MrVideo for replaying to me.

“You Powerbook is virtually useless to you with a cracked display. The was probably more extensive damage to it as well.”

why do you think that there might be more extensive damage? What about an external monitor?

I ordered a new powerbook and I will try to see if I get acces to the damage computer from the new one, I thought it will be woth trying. Otherwise I will try to go the apple dealer, but I think that it will be cheaper if I could figure out what it is and fix it myself.

Any recommendation will be more than welcome, I know it is fustrating but I have already learned so much.

Thanks to all who try to help.
many
Harry Pallenberg
May 10, 2005 at 3:51 am

If you have access to another newish mac you can try starting it up in ‘target disc mode’ – that way your smashed mac will show up as a firewire drive on the desktop of the ‘main’ mac.

To do this 1st unplug al FireWire devices from both computers. Then make sure that the Target Mac is turned off, the ‘main’ mac can be on. Connect the 2 macs with a firewire cable, and star the smashed mac up while you hold down the “t” key.
Hold it down till you can maybe see the firewire symbol on the smashed screen – or if you cant make it out wait till you smashed disc appears on the ‘main’ macs desktop. Now you can copy all your data to the good mac. When you are done – drag the disc to the trash, power down, and unplug.

Thanks,
Harry.

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Many
May 10, 2005 at 3:19 pm

That was great. Thanks for all your help Harry, very useful.

I will keep posting my questions as a move through this process and hope that people will be willing to add feed-back and maybe it will be useful for somebody else.

Could I do a Hardware check like that too? I’m new at this but it seems that with an apple reinstalation cd I could do a hardware check. Could this be done via firewire? I guess so.

When the accident happened I thought I had lost it, after I oppened up I thought that could be fix just by replacing the HD and using an external monitor, now I don’t know anymore.

I thought that because the machine sounds like is turning on and when I press shift/control/option/power it looks like it is working and I even see something on the screen but becuse is smashed can tell what.

Thanks for helping all.

Peace.
many

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