Christmas is a time for family, and increasingly extended family, to come together, to break bread and share presents, memories, hopes and dreams. The techie in the family is often sought after at these gatherings … “I have this computer that last week failed to turn on”.
The Macbook Pro A1990 (Intel chip, circa 2019) seems notorious for failure. The machine has side vents that draw in air to flow over the processors before exiting out the back of the casing. This design, however, does not deal with the intake of dirt that is deposited just inside the intake and which over time can lead to shorting.
There are a number of videos on the net by computer repairtechnicians showing how to troubleshoot and repair the problem, which is often just a blown capacitor. As techies they have a number of tools to assist them in diagnostics (assessing USB voltage) and replacing damaged components.
The said computer does not turn on. I have not removed the back looking for any areas of damage and I do not have the tools to repair any problems found.
I sought Google’s advice about potential mac technicians in Brisbane but wondered if HLB had any insights into the problem, its solution or recommendations for computer repairs
Came for the title, stayed for the problem ha ha.
You must work with news companies.
Nothing beats a visual inspection. Going over the board and looking for burnt out areas or missing parts is always a helpful place to start. Burnt out patches are a good sign that a cap went pop and then you’ll know the part to replace. Parts that are moved by a bump are quite easy to see as they’ll all be skewed and are usually near the edges. Missing parts is more difficult to determine because you’ll never be sure if a part was meant to be there without the original schematic. For factory soldered PCBs any pad that has a shiny round top to it means a part is not meant to be there, so that only leaves pads with no solder or partial solder.
IR Cameras are your next best friend. Any component running white hot at start up usually shows what is wrong especially if it’s a small cap or power chip. IR Cameras will usually highlight a component that’s shorting and needs replacement. However, and I don’t recommend this, a can of pressurised air or a can of cleaning alcohol sprayed on a PCB will show heat spots once you disconnect the PCB from power (Cold Versus Hot).
Power supply monitors are great but don’t let you poke around for the real issue. A simple multimeter with probes between Power and Ground can highlight more than monitoring the power supply at the input. In saying that, high current draw can be shown by these monitors (which indicates a short) or low voltage (also a short) but after 30 seconds of power you won’t really be able to correlate the start up cycle of a PCB to amps or voltage. A multimeter will let you poke the pads to see who has a voltage and current can be measured across components (only certain ones though).
I’ve seen Charters Towers based Paul Daniels highly recommended online over the years, if you’re comfortable boxing up and posting the Mac. I’ve not used Paul’s services myself so I can’t speak for experience.
Have you spoken to Apple about it? Total wildcard, but it may be subject to a recall or warranty fix if it’s a known issue, or maybe the unit is even within AppleCare coverage as 2019 isn’t that old. My 2020 Mac is still covered.
The Apple website itself recommended https://geekworks.com.au/ at Coorparoo as an authorised repairer.
The only other thought I had was to speak to one of the local phone repair shops. Some of them may do component level repair or at least know someone who does.
Good luck. It’d be a shame to not be able to repair the machine, but it’s probably on the borderline of being beyond economic repair . On the hardware side, a refurbished 8th/9th gen Intel PC notebook can be found for around $500-600, and Intel Macs won’t be supported in the next version of macOS. If it’s not repairable, then perhaps Apple’s trade in program might be a path forward.
Yes. Intriguing titles are the original click bait.
I bit the bullet and opened up the case but could see nothing obvious. I poked around with the multimeter and there were some 0 voltages but I did not really know what I was doing. The techies look to have “live” schematics where they touch an item on the computer representation of the board and its links show up. I suspect that’s a commercial application.
An IR camera sounds cool (or hot) but one of the YT videos suggested a good one was about $US1,000 so out of range for the passing homelabber. A few of the videos showed them squirting isopropyl around. I guess if you know what you’re doing you can squirt with impunity.
Thanks for the references for Apple hardware repairers.
As you might expect there’s a significant flag fall just to look at the machine. Finding a fault may not be too difficult and if they have a donor board it looked relatively easy to replace the simpler components.
On the other hand replacement logic boards are not cheap and there’s no guarantee that a repaired board will not die the next day.
This was an inherited machine and is unlikely to be covered by AppleCare. I had a brief look at Apple’s Trade In program but the bottom line was the machine had to boot to qualify.
. On the hardware side, a refurbished 8th/9th gen Intel PC notebook can be found for around $500-600, and Intel Macs won’t be supported in the next version of macOS. If it’s not repairable, then perhaps Apple’s trade in program might be a path forward.
