screen dimms while installing OS 10.2.4

1. james - 27 August 2005

   Hello,
   I recently acquired a powerbook G3 233. It has 160 megs of ram and a 6.4 gig hard drive. OS 8.6 was installed on it but it was set to French and I wanted it in English so I got a set of OS 10.2.4 CDs and tried installing it.

   It seems to install fine but what is happening is that when the Mac OSX splash screen starts the system dimms the screen to the point where I can't see anything. If I stare at the screen I can just make out the text and windows although sometimes I can't see where the mouse is. After much squinting I was able to install the OS but the problem persists.

   Any ideas on how to get the screen brightness to stay reasonable? I turned off the energy saving features (I think) but that didn't make any difference. In OS 8.x the screen was perfect.

   Otherwise it seems to boot up reasonably quick.

   If this is the wrong newsgroup to post this please tell me. I haven't needed to post anything in a while...

   thx,
   james

2. matt neuburg - 27 August 2005

   160 megs of RAM is not enough to run Mac OS X. So maybe your problem is a different kind of dimm. :) Seriously, my first move here would be to add lots more RAM. (By the way 6.4 gig is cutting it a bit close too, though I'm running Panther on a 6-gig Tangerine iBook with no problems at all.)

   Are you saying that you *have* in fact installed Mac OS X? If so, use System Preferences to get to the Display pane and adjust the brightness there. On my machine, pressing the F2 key repeatedly has the same effect, but that might not work on your machine.

   Also, if I were you I'd try zapping PRAM three or four times (hold down option-command-P-R during startup until it has "bonged" several times).

   m.

   matt neuburg, phd = matt@tidbits.com, http://www.tidbits.com/matt/ Tiger - http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/tiger-customizing.html AppleScript - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005571 Read TidBITS! It's free and smart. http://www.tidbits.com

3. pailface88@yahoo.com - 27 August 2005

   ? I turned off the energy saving features (I think) but that didn't make any difference.

   What do you mean by "I think"?

   If it is a case of the backlight not being ON, you should be able to see the screen well enuff to operate it so as to change settings in the Energy Saver Preferences by shining a bright light at the screen.

   The F1 and F2 keys control the screen brightness on many powerbook models. I don't know for sure about your model though.

4. james - 27 August 2005

   At the time I tried this it didn't do anything unfortunately.

   Also, if I were you I'd try zapping PRAM three or four times (hold down option-command-P-R during startup until it has "bonged" several times).

   Ok, once I did this I rebooted and the screen was still too dim. But, once it was at the desktop I pressed the physical brightness control button on the powerbook and the brightness immediately snapped up to normal! The strange thing is that I have to press that button once each time I reboot or it stays too dim.

   So, it's essentially working now. thx for the help!

   ttyl,
   james

5. james - 27 August 2005

   Well, the screen was difficult to work with so I wasn't sure if I was turning it off/down properly.

   When I pressed those keys I got a beep but no change on the screen.

   I posted this same question on a couple of newsgroups and on one of the other ones it was suggested that I zap the pram. Ok, once I did that I rebooted and the screen was still too dim. But, once it was at the desktop I pressed the physical brightness control button on the powerbook and the brightness immediately snapped up to normal! The strange thing is that I have to press that button once each time I reboot or it stays too dim.

   So, it's essentially working now...

   thx,
   james

6. Stephen Grady - 27 August 2005

   James,

   Similar machine (PowerBook G3, 266, 512MB RAM), identical problem. I found the solution was to boot into OS9, then boot back into OSX. Zapping the PRAM did nothing. Changing the the RAM to different manufacturers did nothing. Boot into OS9, then boot into OSX and the screen is fine. If you force a shutdown or the computer crashes (kernel panic) the problem starts again. Boot into OS9, then boot back into OSX.

7. matt neuburg - 28 August 2005

   Similar machine (not so similar really: it's an original Tangerine iBook): similar problem! It's dim every time I boot up. The funny thing is that I've stopped thinking about this; I just hit the brightness key after every restart. This is probably a bug in the way Mac OS X interacts with the hardware. I don't know if it's fixed in Tiger because Tiger won't install on this machine (well, it probably will, but there's no easy way to do it so I haven't bothered). m.

   PS James: More RAM will make a huge difference to speed and to hard disk usage.

   matt neuburg, phd = matt@tidbits.com, http://www.tidbits.com/matt/ Tiger - http://www.takecontrolbooks.com/tiger-customizing.html AppleScript - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596005571 Read TidBITS! It's free and smart. http://www.tidbits.com