A 12-inch iBook G4 came in this morning with a sealed box containing an AirPort Extreme Card, and the repair ticket indicated that we were to install the card, max out the RAM, and install Leopard. “Easy enough,” I thought.
It turns out that the unit already had an AirPort card installed, but it wasn’t being recognized. Further, this iBook was a last-generation 1.33GHz model, which had a combination AirPort and Bluetooth card installed, not the available-at-retail AirPort Extreme card used in older products. It had been over a year since I’d been inside an iBook, so it took a little while for me to get to its innards. I was hoping that simply re-seating the AirPort card in its slot would bring it back to life, but no such luck. I swapped in a known-good card, and it still wouldn’t work. I assumed at this point that it’d need a new logic board, as the logic board houses the slot the AirPort card plugs into.
I sometimes get “tunnel vision” when diagnosing, and go straight for the most likely culprit instead of taking the proper diagnostic route. Step one is always reset PRAM and PMU, and I’d forgotten this important step. Before I could really diagnose the issue as based on the logic board, I had to reassemble the unit to the point where I could turn it on and use the trackpad. A short while later, I reset the PRAM and PMU and sure enough, the old card worked just fine.
The moral of the story is to never dismiss the simplest explanation for any problem!