iBook G4 12" will not fully boot, hangs on blank blue screen...

[spilrules]

I received an iBook G4 12" 1.2 GHZ that will not fully boot. It chimes normally at startup, appears to be booting normally, after the gray apple screen with the rotating gear like symbol, it goes to a blank blue screen and stops. I can hear the HD stop spinning shortly after the blue screen.
I have tried: resetting the PRAM, the PMU, removed the added on ram chip (512mb), removed the HD that came with it (which checked out fine after removal) and replaced it with a known working 80GB drive loaded with OS 10.5.8, and it still does the same thing.
Any other ideas I should try? Is it a bad logic board?? If so, would it still chime and go through the initial boot phase and then hang? Any help is greatly appreciated!
Thanks!

 

[Cory Cooper]

Hello and welcome.

There's a blast from the past!

-Can you give us the exact model - Early or Late 2004?
-What OS was installed on the drive it came with?
-OS X Leopard 10.5.8 requires 1 GB of RAM. The 2004 iBooks have 256 MB built-in, so with the 512 MB module you removed, it would only have 768 MB...not enough for Leopard.
-Is the RAM module you removed PC-2100 DDR266?
-The startup chime indicates it has passed POST tests - basically it detects logic board, initializes some other hardware, and does a basic check of RAM - present and working order.
-You aren't getting any startup beeps, correct?
-Is the battery good as far as you know?

C

 

[spilrules]

Hi Cory, thanks for the response!

According to EveryMac.com the early 2004 1.2GHZ was a 14" screen and the late 2004 1.2 was a 12" which is what I have so I guess it is late 2004. It had no OS on it when I got it, the 60GB drive had been wiped clean and I presumed all I had to do was load a system, which I first tried Tiger 10.4 but it would not boot to the CD. That is when I installed the 80GB drive with 10.5.8 Leopard on it thinking it would boot right up, but it still would hang on the blue screen that comes up after the gray screen with the apple and spinning gear. (By the way, now it does not go to the blue screen but hangs up on the gray screen with the apple logo and spinning gear).

After your reply I checked and found that OSX Leopard 10.5 requires 512mb mb not the 1GB as you mentioned, however you are correct that the on board was 256mb and the extra chip was 512, so after removing the 512 there would not be enough. However I was also not able to get it to work with the 80 GB drive installed with OSX 10.5.8 with the 512 chip added either. And yes the 512 was PC-2100 DDR266.

I am able to get it to chime 3 times to re-set the PRAM, however I cannot get it to boot into Safe Mode with the Shift key depressed at startup, nor can I get it to boot into Recovery Mode with Command R at startup, so I cannot get to the Utilities program. It also will not boot to a CD holding the C key at startup again not allowing me to access Utilities.

Finally, no I am not getting any beeps at startup, just a good healthy chime.
So if you (or anyone else looking) have any other thoughts or suggestions, I would love to hear about them!

Thanks!

 

[spilrules]

Sorry I forgot your last item, no the battery is not good, it only holds a bit of a charge, everything is being done with the A/C adapter.