Hello,
I have tried and it will boot into a bootable install cd but with no video, on screen or DVI.
More to read:
I believe the computer works perfectly booted into an operating system - sans video. I have succesfully set my disabled video mac to enter open firmware at boot by turning off auto-boot in the terminal prompt by duplicating keyboaard shortcuts I have verified on another mac, but the disabled video mac still wont enter open firmware at boot and so the computer won't boot at all. If I then zap the pram thereby resetting the auto-boot to true then the disabled video computer will boot OSX but with no video on the lcd or DVI output. If I then try to enter open firmware at boot by keying command-control-O-P - it won't - I will get no screen anywhere and can't boot into OSX. But....
If I sit in front of the tv watching a DVD and try the open firmware boot continuously for two hours it will by some strange circumstance boot into open firmware with video and then boot into OSX with perfect video at lcd and DVI output - but the video may then go bad and I will get a bright white screen and frozen mac.
The computer was fine when I bought it from a neighbor. The video got steadily worse. I believe he had nothing but hacked and filesharing downloaded software installed on the hard drive likely including a downloaded Tiger install. I have installed OSX from my factory Jaguar install cd's onto a wiped hard drive in the disabled video mac, and have since purchased a factory Tiger install disk, but not installed it on the video disabled mac.
I have read that viruses or bugs can't infect the bios on a computer- but I suspect that this is not true. I know there is program that will rewrite open firmware commands to allow monitor spanning on a imac, and there are hacks that will edit the bios on a pc laptop that will allow the computer to boot with non-proprietary mini-pci cards that normally stop the computer from completing the boot process - with a message. I have download and used one of these bios hacks on a laptop that wouldn't boot with an non-proprietary wireless mini-pci card. It worked perfectly.
I have a Wall Street and know that it doesn't always successfully boot into open firmware and that there may be open firmware settings that will slow booting so that video will not work.
I know that I am speculating but it just seems that these symtoms are more likely to be a bug or virus in the bios than some logicboard overheating problem. I have never had any mac or pc fail like this ........I am sorry that is not true. I have a 64mb pci video card in a pc that intermittently loses video for an interval of a second and then comes back on perfectly.
In not so short, I suppose it probably is some video circuitry problem and that I can safely toss the motherboard in the rubbish but I would like to flash the board with an older available bios flash first just for the hey of it. It so happens that there is a flash for the non-dvi titanium powerbooks that I suppose will work with this computer, but of course it will not flash so I need to resedit the flash itself if such is possible- that is - if it is a resedit command that prohibits or allows the bios to flash or not flash a particular mac.
As to the possibility of checking the open firmware settings during a successful open firmware boot - I should have been prepared at the last successful boot. I am afraid that now I might fail to boot at all into open firmware and at any rate I am sick to death of trying .
Thanks for reading this incredible whatever it is.
Bye for now,
Scott
