black screen of death and iBook monitor spanning



I've been loving my new iBook G4. It's much faster than my previous iBook (800 MHz, G3 processor), is way quiet, and I love having a faster wireless connection.

But there have been two glitches that have driven me nuts:

* First, the minor one: some CDs just won't play correctly. This includes both audio CDs and install discs. If I copy the discs to a CD-R, then all is well. For example, I tried to rip a ColdPlay album to iTunes, and iTunes wouldn't play the disc or import anything. The copied disc, however, was fine.

* Now for the big one. WIthin days of getting the iBook, which came with OS 10.4.2, I connected it up to my 160 GB Fantom Drive via FireWire to do a backup. I slept the computer after unmounting the drive and took the iBook back upstairs to my office. It wouldn't wake up---instead, I got the black screen of death, in which the computer is in a sort of zombie state. If I hit the Num Lock key, it lights up, but the screen won't come on, and nothing will either wake it up or put it back to sleep. Doing a restart doesn't work either, at least on this iBook---I had to either remove the battery or hold the power button down to do a forced shutdown.

The second time this happened to me, I couldn't load the Finder without a kernal panic. I had to finally do an archive and install of 10.4.2, and I've never had to reinstall the OS before in order to solve a software issue. But clearly, something screwed up something deep within the BSD subsystem, and my computer simply wouldn't boot. That's also when I learned that the DiskWarrior 3.0.3 CD I had won't boot the new iBook, but that's a separate issue.

So I thought it had something to do with the FireWire drive; maybe the firmware wasn't compatible or something. However, on two occasions I took the iBook in to MedCases for work, might wake it from sleep on the SEPTA train home, and the next time the iBook would again be a zombie. Very reproducible. I thought it might be the third-party RAM I installed, but that was from a very reputable dealer and I even paid extra for that reason. But I held off on removing the RAM.

It finally occurred to me that this was only happening when I would disconnect my iBook from a second monitor. I should also add that I span across both monitors using Screen Spanning Doctor, version 0.3.3 (the latest, which is Tiger-compatible). I'd used SSD for probably 2 years on my previous iBook and loved it. Once you have an extended desktop, it's hard to go back. I never had any issues on that iBook, rarely encountered the black screen of death, and heartily endorsed it to others in various Web forums. SSD is basically an open firmware hack that enables monitor spanning and the use of alternate resolutions (and also provides the option for running the laptop with the lid closed while connected to a second monitor, something I do not recommend anyone do, out of concern for heat damage to the logic board). It turns out that iBooks, like PowerBooks, really can span two monitors, but Apple apparently crippled the firmware to not allow this in iBooks, perhaps as an incentive for people to buy the more margin-rich PowerBooks. The SSD hack does not work with many older iBooks, particularly those with ATI RAGE graphics chips.

On a hunch, I decided to disable the SSD hack. I reset open firmware (startup with command-option-O-F held down, then type in reset-nvram, hit return, type in reset-all, hit return and the machine will reboot). While it's hard (if not impossible) to prove a negative, I have yet to experience any black screens of death after a week or so of multiple sleep-wake cycles, mostly unconnected to a second monitor. I'm back to mirroring my displays, which is not as good as spanning, of course. But I'm waiting to see if a Screen Spanning Doctor update might come out at some point that would reassure me this problem won't happen again. Perhaps it is the newer Radeon 9550 chip used in the current iBooks, but who knows.

I wouldn't disparage Screen Spanning Doctor. It's a great way to enable what was crippled (unnecessarily in my view) as regards dual monitor capabilities in more recent iBooks that do not use the RAGE chipset. It was wonderful on my older iBook, and I miss that functionality. And if, in my travels, I find out that it really isn't SSD but something else I haven't identified, I'll certainly post it here, and be very happy that I can go back to using monitor spanning on my new iBook.

UPDATE: For reasons I don't understand, this is probably the most popular post on my blog. I see evidence of people reading this one post probably every few days, which suggests to me that this is a problem for at least a few people. That said, as indicated in a later blog post, my issues were absolutely not a result of any issues with Screen Spanning Doctor. It was indeed the logic board, which was replaced in Sept, 2005, and my iBook has been doing fine ever since. I'm writing this while spanning, for example, and my iBook G4 hasn't had a single issue since that motherboard was replaced one year ago. Please don't blame SSD for your problems, unless you've ruled out intrinsic mechanical failures first.

Posted: Fri - October 21, 2005 at 11:30 AM          

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