A dead macbook.

2010 April 1 at 13:22 » Tagged as :toast, macbook, chart,

My Macbook never get's shut down or restarted, it keeps running for months on end without any hiccups, but the other day it died. It started with the battery getting drained. I just closed the cover, turned it over and put in the spare battery.  When you do that the Macbook automatically hibernates, you need to press the power button to wake it up. But it wouldn't.

Macbook motherboard

I plugged in the power cable and tried again with the same result. Next I let the battery charge some more and tried again. The last attempt was with a borrowed battery but the machine still refused to wake up. Time to take off the screws, there are many screws, including a few loose ones belonging to Jobs. I removed the top panel, unplugged the ribbon cable connecting the top panel to the mother board, put it back in and tried again. Guess what? nothing happens. Then I unplugged the machine again and shorted the pins for the power button connector with the tip of a ball point pen. Viola the machine started up! I shut it down again by connecting the mouse (there is no other way), connected the cable and tried again. Nothing happens. Thought to remove the cable and spray some contact cleaner, but the cable came apart.

Macbook motherboard

I looked around for a replacement cable but it's not available. The local apple agents would happily sell me the top panel with the cable included and I would happily by from them if they had the darned thing in stock, which they don't. Now I am waiting for them to get one down, let's see how it goes.