Damaged Goods

Do-It-Yourself repairs and user-modified systems:: While the vast majority of machines that pass thru our shop have never been tampered with (aside from RAM upgrades and external add-ons), every now and then one arrives that has been opened up and modified, upgraded, or "fixed" - with various degrees of success.
: We applaud those who have the know-how to sort out details and troubleshoot hardware problems - bravo! But, before you decide to let a friend, neighbor, or relative "take a stab at it," you should know that plenty of potential pitfalls await the unwary.
: One thing is certain: Never take your Mac to a PC shop. PC techs are liable to sell you things you don't need, install stuff you don't want, and give you advice that is guaranteed to cause you grief. Some will gleefully go where they've never gone before, doing more harm than good and turning minor service into major trauma. (A few examples follow.)

Accidents happen.: We receive significantly more notebooks needing repair than any other type of machine, because the very same qualities that make laptops attractive - compact size and portability - tend to greatly increase risk of damage. Broken hinges, dark displays, stuck discs, dead drives, damaged keyboards and trackpads, spills, dents, pooched ports..... laptops take a beating.
: In most cases, accidental physical damage is not covered under Apple's warranty. But, it might be covered by homeowners insurance - or - if machine was purchased with a credit card, your credit card company may provide additional coverage.
Something as simple as a broken hinge (or, in this case, a damaged frame) can can lead to far more costly service if not repaired or replaced quickly. Broken notebook frame at hinge.
Towers-versus-desktops-versus-notebooks:: Towers tend to be far more sturdy than other desktop models. (I'm always surprised at the divide between those who would never consider anything less, and those who have never considered a tower at all.) Towers are certainly easiest to service, easiest to upgrade, and easiest to modify. Components, connectors and cables are stout, full-size and easily handled. We don't see many towers in the shop, partly due to their construction, but also because their owners tend to be serious power users who probably don't need much help.
: iMacs have big, bright screens, a compact footprint and come well-equipped, making them perfect for most folks. They're not always a picnic to work on, tho..... Towers and desktop models tend to outlive notebooks primarily because they're stationary, but also because they work in a stable environment, unaffected by humidity, sudden temperature changes and condensation. These are all factors which contribute to a long life of serious use.
: Then there are notebooks and the Mac Mini. (Minis use a notebook hard drive, notebook-style connectors and boards, and may be thought of as a notebook without a display or keyboard.) Notebooks that survive the longest are those which are carefully handled, travel in well-padded cases, treated with care and kept well away from liquids.

Minor design flaws (yes, even Apple):: Apple design criteria and goals have always been cutting-edge. After twenty years of setting design trends and bringing spectacular devices to market - many of which earned entry into museums of modern art and design - Apple now enjoys widespread recognition as the industry leader and continues to set the bar for manufacturing and product design. In the process, tho, some designs have been so exotic and unusual as to compromise certain aspects of machine function, or create special considerations that might be viewed as being flawed.
One example of an Apple design considered to be somewhat less than perfect is the G4 PowerMac Cube released in 2000. This design has a 7-inch cube core, released and extracted by a spring-loaded handle with machine turned upside-down (as it was displayed during its MacWorld Expo introduction - core suspended over inverted case). While the design was as spectacular as it is unique, it had a few characteristics that proved to be something of a drawback, such as having all ports on the bottom of the machine where they were hard to access. Minor flaws, really, and easily overlooked by those who appreciate stunning design concept and execution. A handful of other designs along the way have had more significant flaws in terms of serviceability and reliability..... The Y2K PowerMac Cube. (Stock photo from web.)
Major design flaws:: Design flaws considered to be significant are those which create problems well beyond mere cosmetic concerns and minor irritations; major design flaws lead to costly service and often leave a dull impression on those forced to deal with ugly and unnecessary situations. Here is one example of a design flaw that was so blatant as to be completely overlooked:




This is the back side of an early iSight-equipped G5 iMac logic board, only accessible with complete disassembly.

: Like all desktop computers, this iMac has a PRAM battery on its logic board - a battery with a life expectancy of three to five years. When the day comes to replace that PRAM battery,owners will be in for a nasty shock: Replacing the button battery requires disassembly of cabinet and bezel, removal of shields, subassemblies, connectors, LCD display, speakers, fan(s), drives, and removal of logic board.

This iMac's immediate predecessor was one of the easiest to service, most elegant cabinet designs ever devised; a few captive screws release machine's back cover and stand, exposing all components neatly arranged and easily accessible - including PRAM battery.

While outer appearance is almost identical, this next model has a completely different cabinet, one designed to open from the front, making even minor service quite difficult because logic board and internals were designed to be accessed from machine's back.

Other oddities specific to this model include diagnostic LEDs hidden behind RH speaker (photo, right).

Lower right-front of logic board with bezel, LCD display, and shields removed.

Notorious TiBook hinge problem:

Photo (right) shows broken Titanium PowerBook (aka TiBook) hinges, a problem all too common to this 2002 model. Damage is compounded by the fact that replacing a hinge required replacing the entire $700 display - at least as far as Apple was concerned. A cottage industry sprang up for these TiBooks, offering stainless steel replacement hinges installed to existing display for $300 - still an expensive fix.

TiBook hinges typically broke in one of two ways, both illustrated at right: Top example is broken at hinge pin with cast aluminum arm missing entirely. Bottom hinge is still intact at pin, but is missing a two-inch section of its arm (above bend), which can pry display apart and crack display bezel.

Top hinge: Broken LH hinge leaves display dangling by backlight cable. Not good.

Bottom hinge: This type of break causes

display housing to split at corner.
Pinched optical drive slot:

: This photo shows a notebook's CD/DVD drive slot from the inside of machine with drive removed. Aluminum frame spans an opening that measures almost 5-inches wide; a moderate amount of pressure is enough to bend frame and close that slot, rendering the optical drive useless. This is a result of mishandling and not really a "design flaw" per-se, unless you consider optical media diameter to be flawed. In this case, a CD was stuck inside drive with machine repeatedly trying to eject it. Bench tests showed optical drive was fully functional despite damage to frame.

PC shops and Macs go together like... oil and water.

First off: There _are_ PC techs here in Nevada County who are competent and professional, technicians we happily recommend when called upon to outsource PC issues. These are talented, experienced, resourceful individuals, with a history of integrity and honesty, including a few I call friends. Among them are IT pros (many of whom are trying to make a go of Linux, by the way), and at least one PC shop that we recommend when the question comes up. But, there are also a few propellerheads that we will _never_ deal with; including shops that show little regard for their own customers, and nothing but contempt for Mac users. Think I'm kidding?

One local PC shop charged $250 for a simple OS install on a Mac - an obscene charge by anyone's standards - using client's own System disks (no expenses, little effort required).
A local computer support service (?) proposed acting as a kind of broker - "partnering" as the kid put it - by sending us Macs for service, then doubling repair bills back to their customers. "You have to give people what they expect," he explained.
Another PC shop dabbling in Mac repairs discovered they couldn't do the job. They called for help, expecting us to bail 'em out over the phone, but flat refused to refer their client to us - which would have been the right thing to do (and is the only way we work here at the MacShack.)
One PC techie employs the "learn by breaking" technique: He'll know better next time, having learned the hard way - on your hardware and at your expense.
A caller described symptoms and wanted to know if we had a $200 replacement part for a Mac. (He declined to identify himself, but CallerID gave him away.) When I commented that replacement probably wasn't necessary, he was flabbergasted. A day later, machine was brought in by its owner, and we had it up and running in less than a minute.

PC shops are losing business to the Macintosh platform every day, and they will do anything to stem the stampede. These shops cling to their customers like flypaper - regardless of client's need, benefit or welfare. Some can barely conceal their contempt, preferring to rip Mac users with the (correct) assumption that they'll never be back anyway.

Ham-handed repairs are easy to spot.

In order to open and service this particular iMac model, all cables must be disconnected from the logic board, including the display's video cable which connects via a tiny logic board pin array, enlarged (x5) in photo, right.

When this machine arrived, it booted to a Kernel Panic with corrupt and/or missing Operating System files. Its monitor displayed data and backlight, but only in shades of red (green and blue video signals missing).

Trying to get at machine's hard drive may have been the original motive for taking this Mac apart, but whoever opened this machine never got that far. Instead, a pair of video-out pins got mashed thru mishandling, damaging the logic board when machine was hastily reassembled. Machine went from bad to worse before arriving here at the shop.

Cases like this one are carefully documented and discussed before any repairs are attempted; after all, we take pride in our work and will not be held responsible for the mistakes of others. We restored video, recovered data on its hard drive (machine's original problem), then updated OS.

22 tiny pins provide video output.

Damaged pins on logic board prevented this video plug from seating. Using foam tape on retainer doesn't help the situation.

Haphazard, careless reassembly killed a 'Book.

When this notebook arrived following an "upgrade" by some PC tech, it powered on to a black screen, no startup tone, and no sign of life other than fans running at full speed. Among other things, it had many missing, loose, stripped and misplaced screws; pinched, damaged, broken and incorrectly routed cables; and a hard drive flopping around with only one mounting screw in place. With so many problems, even an autopsy was impossible.

Photo (right) tells the story: Incorrect, too-long screw protrudes thru frame where it should be flush. It just happens to be directly over power cable from DC-in board, and it just so happens to be dead-center over cable's thickest point. Bare copper was visible around edge of indentation, revealing short circuit to ground. Hard drive data was intact (miraculously) but logic board and machine was DOA.

Pry it open, let's see what's in there...

This notebook was almost killed by curiosity (near as I can tell). Disassembling a notebook requires care, organization and adherence to procedure; salvaging this Mac was no small task.

Spring loaded heat-spreader mount was broken, lifting heat sink on one side and robbing CPU of any cooling.

Machine was still (somewhat) functional when it arrived, although its fans went on full-tilt moments after startup, and screen would blackout periodically.

Many screws were stripped, missing and broken, including a critical heat sink mount alongside processor chip (located between the two screws shown at left). Right screw is intact, left screw is lifting heat-spreader and causing a noticeable bulge in top case and keyboard.

Duct tape holds optical drive to remains of broken front bezel. Amazingly, this SuperDrive was still fully functional.

Optical drive had apparently been removed for some reason (mounts and cast aluminum bezel were broken), then replaced with duct tape. We were able to repair everything, including machine's SuperDrive, but - unfortunately - damage to the optical drive ATA bus prevented drive from functioning when installed. Machine was reassembled without an optical drive, and its repaired SuperDrive was placed into an external FireWire enclosure.


Do-it-yourself upgrades:

The owner's goal was to upgrade his laptop optical drive to a SuperDrive, but it never happened. After obtaining a drive that might have fit, he carefully disassembled his notebook, keeping track of each screw and every part he removed - until he got to the logic board. When he attempted to disconnect a tiny plug, he managed to pull the entire connector off logic board - traces, solder and all. (Socket shown upside-down next to its former location on corner of board). He brought his logic board to the shop and I reconstructed the board's tiny copper traces for him and successfully repaired connector, but.....

When he took his logic board home and tried to reassemble his notebook, the display was black. He attempted to fix the display, but then his notebook refused to startup and would only beep (meaning machine's RAM was toast). Last I heard, he planned to part-out the remains.

Even with guides and great care,

disassembling and reassembling a

notebook does not lend itself well

to being a do-it-yourself project.
Amateur hard drive replacement.: Still under warranty, a notebook underwent a hard drive upgrade at the hands of its new owner, a man who was so focused on trying to split the machine's case he neglected to remove a few central screws. Resulting damage was about $400 with a bent aluminum case and broken keyboard. (He thought repairs should be covered under warranty.)

Disc fishing:

Slot-loading disk drives present a hazard or two that might be unexpected, including the fate of nonstandard CDs and DVDs that enter - and do not exit - these drives. Other foreign matter may find its way into that slot, too, and many a damaged drive has passed thru the shop.

Once a mini-disc or foreign object has become stuck in the drive, trying to fish it out thru that tiny slot is all but impossible, as this client found out:

Trying to extract a disk, the stainless steel "floor" of this optical drive got mangled.

Photo (above) shows a SuperDrive removed from a notebook; slot lines up at very top of drive opening, disc guide is visible in top-left corner. Owner of this Mac tried to pull a CD from optical drive with needlenose pliers. (Holding down the mouse/trackpad button during startup or restart should eject any removable media, including CDs and DVDs.)
Even the pros have accidents.: Another notebook machine undergoing an upgrade, this time at the hands of a competent and experienced technician who accidentally damaged its audio connector. These connectors are made of soft plastic, only slightly harder than chewing gum, and they can be difficult to separate. Down in a hole under EMI shield, connector was barely visible with little room to work; when connector's plug refused to come loose, the entire connector ripped from logic board. We disassembled machine, removed logic board, repaired audio connector - and machine's upgrade continued successfully.
Sometimes factory repairs - aren't.

Here's a strange one:

A client brought in his wife's notebook. He said wine had been spilled on it when it was new, costing him $750 for a replacement logic board and repairs from Apple, but it had been operating perfectly since - until lately. He'd taken the (now three-year-old) notebook to an Apple store complaining that it seemed to be "acting sluggish," then received word that its logic board, optical drive (CD/DVD-RW), and its hard drive had all failed. He canceled the repair order, and the notebook was returned to him from a facility somewhere in Tennessee (at no charge) with a letter and report bearing Apple's letterhead. And now, the notebook's display was black, too. Odd.....

We plugged-in an external monitor and fired it up: It sounded happy, external monitor mirrored properly, battery charging, but display's backlight was off (data only). Hard drive and OS checked out okay, optical drive boots as it should. Off to the bench for disassembly - and this is where things got weird.

First, a lump under keyboard turned out to be the Airport antenna wire carelessly trapped under machine's RAM shield. The logic board had indeed been replaced at one time (proven by its new ethernet ID). Bottom case and bottom shield still had substantial residue and dry stains (wine?). Top case and top shield were missing all retaining screws, all eight logic board screws were missing, and all but two bottom shield screws were gone. Worse: The fan cable was unplugged, as were the display backlight, microphone cable and sleep light.

Better than shipping a machine in pieces, I suppose. This notebook had been declared dead and returned to owner.

Disassembly to the logic board was easy with all the screws missing and cables disconnected, plus the fact that somebody had recently split this notebook's case. (It's not very difficult to tell when a notebook has been opened.) Replacing all those missing screws took awhile, but luckily I had most of them on hand. Rerouted, reconnected and properly secured the loose cables, then reassembled and tested machine: Working perfectly. Hard drive, optical drive, logic board, fan, sleep light, display, PMU, PRAM, various settings..... I could find nothing wrong.

Not a good sign: Residue from spilled wine was not removed the first time this machine's logic board was replaced.

Perhaps the sight of these stains and shield damage was enough to abandon repairs on its second trip to Apple?

Spills (obviously) are not covered under warranty, so the first $750 repair was probably a bargain, judging from the area of this stain. If owner's current complaint is "sluggishness" - and machine operated flawlessly when assembled, which it did - then its only problem was a shortage of RAM, having barely enough to run the OS alone (upgrade slot was empty). Why disassemble this machine to begin with?

By the way.....

It's very rare for a machine to leave the shop in pieces. But, if a basket case is destined to be parted out, the owner may request that we skip reassembly.

Alien invasion, eh?: What you see below is a screen dump of the Finder, showing aftermath of running out of storage space on a large hard drive while doing some heavy lifting.



Finder showing desktop and open Edit menu following a high-speed crash (note intact keyboard shortcuts, date and time).

: A recording studio in full flight, mixing down tracks while simultaneously copying audio files thru a different app and running a half-dozen other things in the background.; "I could tell things weren't quite right," the engineer told me, "but I just had to get this one last job finished." With processors working full-tilt and a massive amount of data on the move, there wasn't time for an error message or any warning: Lights out, game over, hard drive hit the wall. After a forced shutdown and restart, he was horrified to see screens full of gibberish.; "I couldn't even describe it over the phone," he added. True enough.
: As it turned out, nothing was lost. Only the Operating System had broken, unable to display fonts (among other things). In fact, after we managed to empty 13GB of trash and relieve the desktop of another 24GB, the machine seemed to function well - except that you couldn't read much of anything. (What you see above is actually known as the "last resort font" consisting of a single placeholder [A] where each letter would otherwise appear.)
: We recovered data to a new, larger drive, replaced the OS and made repairs. (Hard drives should have a minimum of 10-15% free space available; if you're editing large audio/video files, consider using a RAID array of redundant drives.)

Time stands still.....

This machine was only about a week old when it arrived here at the shop. Owners wanted help reinstalling its Operating System - photo shows System install screen (right) - but it quickly became apparent that an OS install wasn't going to solve this problem.

During installation, progress bar in install window stopped moving, as did its estimated time remaining. (I have no explanation for the black and white bars near top of screen.) Moving install window around would cause screen to refresh and update, but only momentarily. Installation completed, but System logs showed a failure of machine's video card (replaced under warranty).

This Mac completed OS installation despite video card "restarting" every few seconds.

Ugly backup surprise:: What happens when a PC user "helps out" with a Mac? All sorts of strange things, and here's one that proved disastrous.
: A notebook hard drive failed with an apparent "head crash," so its owner requested a replacement. After installing and formatting the new drive, I suggested the client send her failed drive to DriveSavers for data recovery, but she declined saying she had recently made a backup. But..... when we connected her backup drive and attempted to restore her data, we discovered that her husband - a PC user - had setup the drive using Windows NTFS format. Consequently, being a non-HFS volume, her backup drive was essentially useless. We could see the files, and she might be able to copy-and-paste things one-at-a-time I suppose, but any proper data transfer was out of the question without a too-expensive recovery effort.

Thai Book from Shanghai.: No, this wasn't a Titanium PowerBook (aka TiBook). It was a brand new (aluminum) top-of-the-line 17" MacBook Pro purchased in Shanghai, and it had a hard drive that was full-up. Seems business as usual in Shanghai is to load computers with as much pirated software as they can fit. A whole different kind of ugly.....
: Machine had a Parallels partition with Windows Vista and a slew of PC apps installed, but majority of hard drive was filled with the complete Adobe suite of software, full MS Office suite, Logic Pro, Final Cut Pro, and just about every other high-end program you can name. Owner wanted the Windows partition erased so he'd have room to experiment with the cornucopia of Mac apps, since he was unfamiliar with most of them. He also wanted the lone admin account named "Apple" changed to his name.

Login logjam.: Another notebook with liquid spilled on keyboard. Owner said he heard a faint "sizzle" before screen went black. When it arrived, it was still powered on.....
: Disassemble, clean and dry, then tried startup on the bench prior to reassembly. As it turned out, machine's keyboard was the only casualty, but other problems became apparent when startup took over 15 minutes. An endless stream of windows began opening: Three browsers, Mail, a handful of utility apps, Internet Connect trying to find a dialup line, Classic launched with another app or two, spinning beachballs, progress bars, error messages and dialog boxes, all stacked up and demanding attention. Replacing the keyboard was easy; getting into the OS to remove all the stuff set to launch on startup, then weeding out a whole bunch of System "haxies" was another matter. Plus, machine's hard drive was full. Owner said he had "help" setting up his Mac.

Parts is parts...: Unless there aren't any parts. This particular laptop model (below), like the Titanium PowerBook that preceded it, has a display module that wasn't intended to be serviced. It's all or nothing, which means a minor fault requires replacement of entire display module. But, unlike its predecessor, this PowerBook had reasons for that other than design and construction..... reasons that applied to this 17" model only.
: Nevertheless, we were resourceful enough to find replacement cables, inverter board, and a few other goodies anyway, and attempted repairs to this machine's malfunctioning display - to no avail. Fault was in the display panel itself; new cables, connectors and inverter didn't help.


Mac boots despite damage to display/video.

: What you see here is a notebook starting up after being dropped. The first light gray vertical lines are initial startup screen with logo and spinning gear. (Connected to an external monitor, this machine mirrored correct video output perfectly.) Any animation onscreen caused vertical lines to dance about like some deranged bar code.
: We got it working briefly, a few times, but it was doomed to fail without a replacement display panel. Frustrating. And a replacement display was too expensive at the time. So, this 'Book wound up attached to an external monitor, no longer mobile.

Death rattles and other unhappy sounds:: Sometime, a sound says it all. If you know what you're hearing, you'll also know it's probably too late to do anything about it. You _do_ have a backup, don't you?
: (Sound files will be added here from time to time as opportunities arise.)


Play it again, Max.

Here's an odd one: This hard drive repeatedly tried to free its stuck read/write heads. Resulting sound is rather curious (recorded with a microphone).

Maxtor death rattle.

Hammer head.

This drive failure was so loud, I just had to record it. Perfect candidate for DriveSavers. This drive is beating its heads against the wall.

Hitachi hammer.

Mic'd another hard drive.

By the way: If you think you're gonna freeze, heat, beat, shock or torture a drive into submission, odds are you'll only scrub data from its platters, making recovery impossible.

Toshiba thrash.

nCity Home..........Solutions...........Support..........Technical..........Courses..........Links..........nCity Forum