Cutting 2 wires saved my iBook G3 600MHz

I was just given a gift of $1000. Wow. What a gift! Now, it was not in the form of cash, or anything material. It was knowledge. Knowledge that saved us over $1000 dollars. For the past few months I have not used my iBook because I thought that it had died. I was sad, as it had been around the world several times and seen me through a lot. It had its innards replaced once and I had an intimacy with its internal works like a macho man with his hot rod.

Symptom: The computer kept on booting, but then after a few seconds it went to sleep and wouldn't stay awake. This was even after having had the Apple iBook logic board repair.

Fix: Cut two wires. What could be more simple? Only two screws to remove and two wires to cut. Amazing, simply amazing.

I had scoured the internet for months trying to find a possible solution to the problem, but there was no solution to be found until an hour ago when I stumbled upon this discussion thread in the Apple forums which pointed to this site with detailed instructions.

Here's a photo of what it looks like:

And for those who stumble across this in a search to fix their iBook: be confident. As you can see from the serial number in the top right of the photo, my iBook was covered under the logic board replacement program - but it still had this problem - it was easily fixable with the snip of the two wires pointed to in the picture. Remove the keyboard and follow the instructions for removing the airport card and the metal plate under it, then look for the connector in the above photo and snip the two wires closest to the keyboard connector. Make sure the battery is out and the power disconnected during the operation. And there you have it - a fix for your iBook video problem, which really wasn't a video problem after all.

What a fabulous find! I'm so happy - I wanted to share it in the hopes that someone else can benefit from this info, too. I was just about to throw out the computer because we are packing to move back to North America next week. Had it been just a few days later, this information would have been absolutely worthless to me - as it is it was worth a thousand dollars - the price of a new computer. And this means more money for school! Yeah~