This is the very same problem my son had with his g4 ibook last month. While I was using his laptop cruising Free Republic it just stopped. It turned itself off and nothing we could do ourselves or by troubleshooting with Apple by phone would turn it back on. The suspicion was a bad power cord but it was the logic board. We were told that it would be at least a week until a new logic board could be located as this was an issue with the ibook. When a logic board was finally found and installed the hard drive crashed. So a hard drive was ordered and installed. All is well now, and it was all covered by the AppleCare warranty except the information on his hard drive. It cost $55 to have the info retrieved and transferred to the new hard drive. Lesson learned to back up iTunes!
I appreciate your post to this thread. Thank you very much.
Yes, he backed up iTunes, although I'm not sure how long it will take to transfer (from DVD-R) 3 gigabytes worth of songs back onto the iBook, if the iTunes library is shot. Hopefully not more than an hour or two.
Hopefully there's no hard drive issues after the logic board is replaced either. That really stinks for you and your son -- as if the logic board going wasn't enough! I'm glad it's all back to normal now, at least.
Thanks again for writing.