Powerbook G4 Blank Screen after Rebooting Blues Again

[enderandpeter]

Hello excellent developers and computer aficionados. Sadly, I am having an issue that I have seen others have similarly experienced. But from what I can tell researching, my problem may be a little different.

My computer has these specifications:

• Powerbook G4
• 867MHz PowerPC G4 processor; 1MB level 3 cache
• 700+ MB of PC133 SDRAM
• 40GB hard drive
• 15.2-inch (diagonal) active-matirix TFT color display
• 32MB of DDR SDRAM video memory

I don't remember the video card model. I believe it's by NVIDIA. Once I get the operating system loading, or a rescue disk to work properly on it, I'll check it out.

Basically, my PPC Ubuntu experience was going amazingly well at first, as I was able to load Ubuntu on it with no problem and restart without a hitch.

At this point, of course, it wanted to download and install updates. It even found an update that acutally let me use the Airport card, which Fedora 12 for PPC failed to do, even after following many guides for installing that b43-fwcutter program.

Anyway, I download the broadcom driver, restarted, and everything was okay. This time, I decide to download and install all the updates. After restarting , the computer hangs up with a black screen, but not before making a popping sound which I believe is the sound of the monitor turning on/off. Before it hangs up, I see a black screen that says Ubuntu 10.04 in the middle with five or so little dots that it looks like are all supposed to light up yellow. Usually, it only gets to the first dot and then the blank screen, or it will even say [OK] all the way to the right, but still the same result.

I can't help but to think an update is causing the issue. I found a guide on the PowerPCKnownIssues page (albeit for Ubuntu 8.04 PPC Alternate installers) that seemed to refer to this very problem. It recommends making changes to my configuration using the rescue tool on the Alternate CD. When I load the rescue tool, however, it reports that it can't find any partitions. Navigating with the shell doesn't help me find my system either. I chose the default partitioning setup when I installed, so I'm definitely not doing anything fancy.

Others who have had such an issue have been able to overcome it by entering "Linux video=ofonly" or even "video=nvidiafb" or "video=radeonfb" at the yaboot prompt. I've tried all these, even adding "nosplash", but the problem remains.

If anyone can offer any help or advice, it would be much appreciated. If you need more info about my system, I'll try to obtain it. Even if I can't get a rescue cd to work, I guess I could get it back to the state of asking me which new software updates to install. This has been quite a painstaking process and I'm hoping to narrow down the issue without installing and rebooting this machine all day. Thank you for your time and any help you can offer!

[linuxopjemac]

You have a Radeon card in your PowerBook. This will not work well with Lucid Lynx. You have to disable KMS. Add the following to /etc/modprobe.d/radeon-kms.conf:

options radeon modeset=0

Can you give me the output (in a terminal, maybe from the terminal) of the following:

cvt 1280 854
cvt 1152 768
cvt 896 600, 
cvt 720 480
cvt 640 480

[enderandpeter]

Thank you very much for responding!!!

I am pretty sure that I have an nVida video card. When I enter the command lspci, it says the following for the video:

0000:00:10.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 440 Go 64M] (rev a3)

Here are the results of the commands you asked me to enter:

$ cvt 1280 854
# 1280x854 59.89 Hz (CVT) hsync: 53.12 kHz; pclk: 89.25 MHz
Modeline "1280x854_60.00"   89.25  1280 1352 1480 1680  854 857 867 887 -hsync +vsync

$ cvt 1152 768
# 1152x768 59.78 Hz (CVT) hsync: 47.71 kHz; pclk: 71.75 MHz
Modeline "1152x768_60.00"   71.75  1152 1216 1328 1504  768 771 781 798 -hsync +vsync


$ cvt 896 600,
# 896x600 59.96 Hz (CVT) hsync: 37.41 kHz; pclk: 42.50 MHz
Modeline "896x600_60.00"   42.50  896 928 1016 1136  600 603 613 624 -hsync +vsync


$ cvt 720 480
# 720x480 59.71 Hz (CVT) hsync: 29.85 kHz; pclk: 26.75 MHz
Modeline "720x480_60.00"   26.75  720 744 808 896  480 483 493 500 -hsync +vsync

$ cvt 640 480
# 640x480 59.38 Hz (CVT 0.31M3) hsync: 29.69 kHz; pclk: 23.75 MHz
Modeline "640x480_60.00"   23.75  640 664 720 800  480 483 487 500 -hsync +vsync

I found a thread of a user who has a computer most similar to mine, I think. He was asked to use the nouveau video drivers as opposed to the more standard nv ones and it seemed to work out. What do you think of that plan? I will give it a try... Unlike him, I don't have any remote desktop service set up, so I think I'm going to have to reinstall Please let me know your thoughts!

[linuxopjemac]

don't reinstall. I will give you a working xorg.conf file soon..

[linuxopjemac]

Can you give me the output of:

cat /proc/cpuinfo

it looks you have this one (same video)
http://www.everymac.com/systems/appl...g4_1.0_17.html

[enderandpeter]

don't reinstall. I will give you a working xorg.conf file soon..

Oh, now you tell me! I've reinstalled Ubuntu like three times already, but in the process, I've learned that it doesn't matter if I install updates of any kind or not after restarting the machine. It always gives me a blank screen. When the computer restarts after Ubuntu is installed, it boots just fine. But even if at the login screen I choose restart after having changed nothing whatsoever, it will give me the same problem. I could have sworn that I once restarted after just updating the Broadcom driver and it did so just fine...

Well, anyway, here is the output of that cpuinfo file:

processor    : 0
cpu        : 7455, altivec supported
clock        : 1000.000000MHz
revision    : 3.3 (pvr 8001 0303)
bogomips    : 83.20
timebase    : 41600571
platform    : PowerMac
model        : PowerBook5,1
machine        : PowerBook5,1
motherboard    : PowerBook5,1 MacRISC3 Power Macintosh
detected as    : 287 (PowerBook G4 17")
pmac flags    : 0000000a
L2 cache    : 256K unified
pmac-generation    : NewWorld
Memory        : 768 MB

It indeed looks like the computer you linked to has the same video card as mine if the lspci query is truthful, but the other features are a little different.

Thank you again for helping me get to the bottom of this!! I will praise the name of Ubuntu from the highest mountain if you can help me get this to work!

[linuxopjemac]

So I was right, it's a 17 inch PowerBook G4/1GHz

model : PowerBook5,1
machine : PowerBook5,1
motherboard : PowerBook5,1 MacRISC3 Power Macintosh
detected as : 287 (PowerBook G4 17")

I need more info

cvt 1440 900
cvt 1152 720
cvt 1024 768
cvt 1024 640
cvt 800 600