Quickly flashing iBook sleep light: wtf?

July 31, 2005 2:05 PM

What does is mean when my G3 white iBook's sleep light flashes very quickly when I am either booting up or trying to shut down?

My girlfriend left my iBook in a funky, incomprehensible state. I couldn't tell if it was on and frozen with the display off, or off. (The display is usually off becuase I use an external monitor (spanning, after hacked firmware) with it. After much playing with the power button I eventually got it to turn on. (It required this fiddling because you just hit the button for a short time to get it to turn on, but you need to press and hold it to use it to turn the machine off. If you don't know which, you end up doing the wrong thing. The speakers it was attached to were off so I couldn't hear the start-up chime.) But during one of these attempts, the sleep indicator light flashed on and off very rapidly, in a way I had never seen before. Running latest Tiger.

posted by yesno to computers & internet (5 comments total)

You need to reset the power manager.

you need to press and hold it to use it to turn the machine off

You don't turn off this way regularly, do you?
posted by cillit bang at 2:28 PM on July 31, 2005

Indeed, you should not turn off the system by holding down the power button. That's the eqivalent of pulling the plug on a desktop machine.
posted by odinsdream at 2:37 PM on July 31, 2005

No, I don't do it regularly. Only when the machine is frozen. (Though with Tiger I've run into the problem of unquittable applications--- activity monitor, kill -9, etc, nothing will exit these doozies. So the machine is not frozen and yet it has to be hard-reset.)
posted by yesno at 2:41 PM on July 31, 2005

Not to HiJack your thread (even though I am)

I had a similar problem with my G3 iBook, then the video went wonky I took it into Authorized Apple Service Provider who told me I was covered by the Expanded iBook Logic Board Repair Extension Program. Anyway now even thought the serial number is in range they say since it was purchased it on September 10, 2001 ( at the World Trade Center no less ) and since I took in for repair after the cut off date the AASP is saying I need to pay them, like a million euros for the repair.

Is there any way to circumvent that? I think I read about other people who were successful in past with this issue.
posted by Livewire Confusion at 3:42 PM on July 31, 2005

BTW, the only reason I feel justified in asking this is because you might have to go down this road yourself...
posted by Livewire Confusion at 3:43 PM on July 31, 2005