mattalltech.com

My good fried Ryan (RHO) had this MacBook that he toted with him to Alaska where before his return to Texas essentially died. The symptoms were simple but seemingly terminal. When trying to start the computer all you got was a black screen, a noisy cd drive, and a solid white power light. No chime, no nothing...

I took a trip down to see Ryan in Austin before the fall semester started. I was able to find that applying pressure to the bottom of the computer casing would allow the computer to boot and to be fully operational. I had encountered a very similar issue on a iBook that I previously owned, and apparently many others experienced the same issue as that is how I learned of the solution. On my previous iBook one of the chips was suspect to coming unsoldered or wasn't soldered properly to begin with. On the iBook many people encountered the same issue with the same chip. I did some googling for Ryan's MacBook but never found any indications of a widespread issue with a similar description. So we just tore the computer open to see if we could immediately see something that would be relevant to the issue.

Photo of iBook bad chip/logic board

The iBook that I fixed earlier in the year was easier to troubleshoot these kinds of hardware issues by nature of the assembly and case design. On the iBook the logic board resided on a chassis that was essentially sandwiched between the keyboard and upper casing and the bottom casing. This allowed the computer to remain operational even though it had it guts spilled out on the floor. You can see photos of the operation on my previous iBook on my Flickr page. However, if I remember right, the design of the MacBook doesn't make it as easy to make small tests on the logic board while assembled in the computer. This isn't a big deal but I didn't feel comfortable assembling the computer out of the chassis while in Austin. The place we were at just wasn't set up for it. We never did find anything that looked immediately obvious so we just placed some hot glue around the area that we had been applying pressure to in hops that we would get lucky and so that we could put it all back together and have some fun around A-Town.

Photo of Failed MacBook "Hot Glue" Hack

The computer wasn't by any means fixed after that but it bought Ryan a little time to work on it as long as he left it flat on a table. A few weeks later Ryan found himself with a new job and a new MacBook so the next time I saw him he just gave me this old MacBook and asked me to get the data off some day when I had time.

Well now that the semester is over and my desk is relatively clear I now have time. This situation worked out really well as I kinda promised someone dear to me that I would get them another Mac after theirs died. God that is another story all of it's own, but kind of related. Any ways back to this MacBook, I currently have it clamped down to my desk with a BIC pen underneath it so that I don't have to be the one to apply pressure to it for the 2-3 hour process of backing up all of the data.

Photo of MacBook after "clamps"

Before I backed all the data up I tried booting this computer, it seemed like it was going to totally boot OSX then after all the preboot screens finished it took me to a plain blue background with the spinning dial. Something wasn't right. So after I finished backing up all the data I let Disk Warrior take a crack at things and it totally worked. I really wanted to salvage this install for testing since the Optical drive on the notebook is totally jacked up, I think RHO tried putting a doughnut in it or something.

Photo of current MacBook after Disk Warrior repairs

After spending several hours troubleshooting the board, testing many hypothesis, random combinations and other ideas I finally feel comfortable reproducing the error and avoiding the error but I was never able to identify the exact fault. I do know that the issues related to applied pressure and the resulting Black screen are related to the first DIMM slot (furthest left when viewing the screen). If I do not place memory in this slot the computer works fine however it is related to the actual slot or related on board hardware and not the memory its self. The region of the DIMM then becomes pressure sensitive when there is memory in both slots or just the suspected bad slot.

Photo of problematic DIMM slot

There is a screw that attaches the logic board to the plastic casing between the two DIMM slots. I found that the plastic screw holder had just broken off so this screw was not securing the logic board. I don't know if that is related but I thought I would mention it. I found several screws that were broken in this manner. I really have to say that the casing on these laptops is not very durable at least compared to previous models.

I did find something else kind of interesting while digging around inside this computer. I found about four pieces of a very fine wire, maybe speaker windings or possibly even induction windings, don't know but here is a photo. There is obviously an insulating core that this fine tin looking metal is wrapped around to form the wire but that's all I could get with my eyes. It is about the thickness of a hair, ideas appreciated.

Photo of one piece of the wire debris

You can see all the photos from this hack job on my Flickr Page.