Chosen Solution
Problem observed: • Onset of the problem was instantaneous and occurred while I was simply looking at the display, without touching the computer. • The display shows normal and distorted colors at the same time: in some places bright green exchanged for black, purple for white, etc. Color positions don’t change unless a window is opened or the window/menu arrangement changes. • Windows are continually surrounded by “splash rings,” similar to what you see when you open a widget in Dashboard, but frozen in one state. • Strangely, I can sometimes see the (color-distorted) contents of one window showing through the background of another window that’s in front of it, even though those same contents cannot be seen while observing through Screen Sharing. • Faint “dancing” horizontal lines are barely noticeable in the brighter parts of the display. • Component colors seem to have their rasters displaced relative to one another, like a color comic strip that was not registered properly when printed. Screen Image Note that some text was visually edited out for privacy.
Other observations • Windows, menus, and backgrounds seen through Screen Sharing are all perfectly normal. • I have not yet tried an external monitor – hopefully I’ll have one set up today. Steps taken so far • Reset PRAM – no change. • Reset PMU/NVRAM – no change. • Booted from separate system on external drive (to detect possible corrupt system color table or other system software problem) – no change. • Shined light through Apple logo with the internal backlight lamp turned off. I noticed same color distortion problem (so it seems that the backlight is not the problem). Suspicions Having read other trouble reports here related to displays, I suspect that the display cable is the most likely problem, though I am concerned that the problem might actually be with the logic board or other circuitry that drives the display. Finally, my questions… • Should I replace the display cable? • If not, what else should I do, and why? • If so, what tips might you offer for best success? Thank you for your time, interest, and help in solving this problem!!
First hook it up to an external monitor to try to isolate the problem. If the problem persists, then your video processor has gone south.
Hi, I saw this discussion and wanted to contribute. I have fixed quite a few PowerBooks and from what I read here and the things you have tried I would suspect the LCD. Since an external monitor works fine it seems to not be the graphic card. You can get a new LCD fairly cheap and the job is fairly easy (you wrote you already tried changing the display cable and inverter so you are almost there!): PowerBook G4 Aluminum 15" 1.5-1.67 GHz LCD Replacement A new LCD is not too expensive, $50-$60 like this one: http://cgi.ebay.com/Powerbook-G4-A1106-W… This model is getting some outdated but I have one myself that is in daily use and fills its role :-)
I have the same display issue with my Macbook Pro 3.1 (mid 2007), 2.4 Ghz, A1226, 15.4 " display The color changes intermittently as you described. I have connected to the external monitor the picture seems perfect. Can anyone suggest where the problem persist? Should I need to replace LCD or only the Lcd cable? It appears the motherboard or the GPU is ok as the external monitor is fine. Backlighting problem is also cannot be as the internal display is bright when it works normal, so power inverter is working fine I presume. Need to check the LCD display cable Also, can it be due to software problem or a RAM problem, as I upgraded my OS from 10.5 to 10.6.3 leopard and Ram was increase to 4Gb from 2GB.
