Dead Logic Board on a PowerBook G4

First of all, let me tell you that everything you read here is based on my experiences and by no means is meant as a technical opinion or diagnostic of the problem you might be facing. The reason I'm writing this is because when I had a failure on my PowerBook, I couldn't find ANY information on the web that would tell me for sure whether I had a dead Logic Board or not, so I thought it would be nice to share my experiences with people who might face the same situation. As I was writing an email using Mail.app a few days ago, my brand new PowerBook simply turned off. It was bought on November 12th, and has 1GB factory installed RAM, 100GB HD, the Dual Layer DVD burner and 1440x960 screen resolution.

Even though I thought that was odd, I just went ahead and tried to restart it. Well, I could hear the startup chime and the light in front of the computer would turn on, but nothing else happened. I tried using the restore DVD it came with, but nothing happened also, and the DVD ended up stuck inside the optical drive. Pressing the mouse button while I restarted the computer didn't work. No problem, I thought. I'll just go through the steps described on Apple's Knowledge Base for resetting the PRAM. Nope, that did not work either. After trying to reset the PMU (no success here) and starting the machine with every possible key combination, something was telling me I might have a bigger problem than originally thought. I've also tried connecting to an external monitor in case it was just a LCD problem (at that point a simple LCD failure would be welcome), but that didn't do me any good.

In case you're wondering, there was no extra RAM installed on the machine, but I've tried a different module just to be sure and everything stayed the same. My call to AppleCare was promptly answered, and after explaining my problem to the person on the phone I was told that it was probably a Logic Board Failure. I didn't mention it on the phone, even thought that was my suspicion, so when the person told me that I realized that it must be something that happens every once in a while.

Why is there no information on the web with the exact symptoms of a Logic Board failure? I honestly don't know, and I hope you never have to look for that kind of information. But as you're here, that might be just what happened to you, so I wish you good luck. The computer is still being repaired, and I'll post the rest of the story here whenever I have any news.

This thread at the Apple Discussions site talks about the problem.