display doesn't respond at startup

[katyd]

I have a iBook Dual USB 500mhz G3

a couple weeks ago it went to sleep and wouldn't wake back up. I restarted it, and while the computer seemed to start up just fine, the diplay never started up (stayed black). One of my professors looked at it, and restarted it while it was plugged into an external monitor. The screen came back on and everything seemed fine. Today, the same thing happened...no screen. I haven't tried plugging it into an external monitor (i don't own the cables), but even so, i seems silly to have to continue to plug it into an external monitor to make it work.

Any ideas?

I am out of warranty (of course), so Apple hasn't been very helpful (that and I am a poor college student).

 

[kenny]

Have you tried zapping PRAM (hold down Cmd-Opt-P-R at startup and wait for the second chime before releasing)? I've found that to fix many woes with display funkyness like this.

 

[chevy]

This can simply be due to the video setting set to a value that is not supported by your screen.

A solution is to work "blind" to try to get back to a supported resolution.

How to do that ? you must have the video selector available on the menu bar. Then move your mouse as far up-right as you can. Then press the mouse button, staying high go a little bit left, then a little bit low down, then release the button. They are chances you select one of the 800x600 resolutions... and get your image back on screen.