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Wednesday, 25 June 2003

The insomniac and the PowerBook that wouldn't wake up ::

I was awakened at 2 am by some loud and apparently drunk young women talking loudly outside my apartment windows. I couldn’t get back to sleep, so I went to the computer. Unfortunately it didn’t want to wake up, or even boot after what should have been a hard reset. I grumbled to myself that the computer was pulling a Rip Van Winkle on me, as if to make up for my not getting any sleep. I somehow stayed awake, played keyboards, did some reading... At 6 am, I called a hardware geek friend on the East Coast. He told me it sounded like the Power Management Unit (PMU) needed to be reset. I agreed, remembering that a couple of my previous PowerBooks had such a button and had needed it pushed on occasion. I couldn’t find any such button on my PB G4, however. I went into work early. Eventually 9 am rolled around and the repair department at work opened. I presented my baby to a woman who seemed to be restraining a smile for some reason. She disappeared around a corner for 30 seconds and returned to show me my PowerBook booting. I felt really glad that at 6 am, I hadn’t gone digging around for a Torx screwdriver with which to perform exploratory surgery.

I asked her what she’d done.

To etch this essential piece of information permanently into my mind, here is the location of the 800 MHz PowerBook G4's PMU reset button, underneath the keyboard:

Added 20 Oct 2003: Do try command-control power-button first. Only reset the PMU if this doesn’t work.

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