Diagnosis

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	Recent changes All pages Editing tutorial

[edit] How can I tell if my computer exhibits the “vertical lines” defect?

• The afflicted computers are predominately Apple Mac 17inch G4 1.67GHz PowerBooks, model number M9689.
• The hardware serial number of afflicted computers usually begins with W85.
• The symptom is one or more one-pixel wide vertical lines, spanning the full depth of the display from top to bottom, in a variety of colours: magenta, cyan, yellow, blue.
• Lines begin to appear by flickering, then soon after stabilise into a steady, solid, vertical line.
• Once one line appears, others are likely to follow at the rate of 1-5 per week.
• Typical first onset is 12-24 months after purchase.

[edit] Accessing your Hardware Serial Number

1. Pull down the Apple menu and pick About This Mac
2. Click on the [ More Info... ] button to launch the OS X System Profiler application
3. You can find your Serial Number in the Hardware Overview panel

To find out where and when your computer was manufactured, you can copy-&-paste your Serial Number to the Chipmunk customer service.

[edit] Pictures and Video

• A typical example is illustrated in the photograph opposite.
• More photos can be seen at David Hudd’s exemplary 17inch “Bridget Riley” Powerbooks database website (where you should register your defective PowerBook's details/photo, if you haven't already done so; see also Action).
• There are six more photos at the AppleDefects.com Apple PowerBook G4 17" Wiki page, as mentioned in Campaign Resources.
• You can watch as a “$3000 laptop births its 7th permanent pixel wide vertical line” in a video recording called 17" G4 "Bridget Riley" Powerbook Pixel Flaw at YouTube.