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Author Topic: Anyone have iBook schematics - or a board?  (Read 1221 times)

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Offline FloidTopic starter

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Anyone have iBook schematics - or a board?
« on: April 03, 2009, 10:53:58 PM »
Kind of OT again, but figured I'd try here for the heck of it:

I'm in the process of opening someone's iBook G4 (12", 800MHz, A1054) which we hoped just had a loose-BGA problem...

Well, instead it seems some surface-mount components, apparently R784 and C690, saw fit to explode.  The capacitor in particular; I still need to pull out the meter and see if the resistor still resists at any sane value.

I'd assume I don't have a snowball's chance of finding replacement values before [expensively] replacing the whole board, but figured I'd try y'all first.  Alternatively, anyone know any Apple forums where people might actually have schematics?  :roll:
 

Offline Zac67

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Re: Anyone have iBook schematics - or a board?
« Reply #1 on: April 03, 2009, 11:33:32 PM »
Don't think there's any Mac schematics around (after the 68ks)...
95% of the capacitors are used for decoupling, so just about any value of the same type is somewhat OK; the resistor value could be approximated by analysing the surroundings, starting with a large value and working downward.
But - something blew up those things and that's probably tricky to find.  :-(
 

Offline FloidTopic starter

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Re: Anyone have iBook schematics - or a board?
« Reply #2 on: April 04, 2009, 01:54:40 AM »
Quote

Zac67 wrote:
[...]
But - something blew up those things and that's probably tricky to find.  :-(


These happen to be close enough to a big piece of metal in the frame [and a helpfully-exposed area of shielding, where nearly everywhere else has a bit of dielectric plastic between] that it might be reasonable to blame condensation for that.  Someone leaves it in a below-freezing car, takes it inside somewhere humid, lets it sit just the perfect amount of time in the perfect position, and fires it up... at which point it becomes my problem if I'm going to help them, I guess.
 

Offline da9000

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Re: Anyone have iBook schematics - or a board?
« Reply #3 on: April 04, 2009, 07:32:05 AM »
I think all you need to do is get a close up photo of the same type of motherboard and as Zac67 says: approximate the capacitor and the resistor you should be able to read off the photo.

Unfortunately I don't have an iBook 800, so I can't help. You should check around Mac forums and ask. Wish I could help more. I've fixed a number of iBooks and PowerBooks and I actually have a couple sitting open... but no 800Mhz.

GL.
 

Offline bloodline

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Re: Anyone have iBook schematics - or a board?
« Reply #4 on: April 04, 2009, 08:20:02 AM »
ifixit.com for motherboard photos... But unless you discover the true reason for the popped motherboard in the first place you are wasting your time... Secondly, I have a 1.5Ghz 12" PowerBook here, and it is painfully slow, much too slow to be useful now... Might be a better idea to pick up a second hand 1st gen MacBook from eBay?

Offline FloidTopic starter

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Re: Anyone have iBook schematics - or a board?
« Reply #5 on: April 04, 2009, 10:10:05 PM »
Quite true all, and thanks for the responses... just making sure there wasn't some secret treasure-trove I'd missed out on.

Obviously a replacement of either the board or the whole machine is in order; cost's an issue, so I'll figure out something.*  I just want to take this opportunity to wish the memory limits on the last-generation Intel Macs weren't so unenthusing... sure, 3GB is "three times" the ~1GB most of the PPCs could fit, but that's ridiculous compared to the headroom in any $400 Turion machine from the past 3 years, argh!  (The owner apparently wishes to dabble in 3D animation, so he'll wind up using as much as he can fit.  That goes for CPU, too, but assuming there's paid-for PPC sofware involved, anything short of a Mac Pro would only be a mild improvement.)

The other "argh" is that, in my experience with secondhand laptops, the disk has always been bashed around under unknown circumstances and will fail at the least-opportune moment.  I keep doing this to myself with my own purchases, but I wish I could avoid it when I have to give other people advice [and will inevitably get the call for a need-it-yesterday teardown and data recovery].

...
*The footnote is that replacing the board (or much of the machine) with a PPC equivalent would still be under half the cost of an Intel-era replacement that'd still be obsolete enough to demand replacement in 2 years.  So this is an awkward situation to be in!
...

Just venting... now I just need to get the disk out and go over their options with them.


@Bloodline, how much RAM do you have in that thing?  I've got a relative limping along on a Mini [due for replacement this year] and 1GB/1.5GHz is still enough for browsing, letter-writing, and... well, CS2 as long as you stick with screen resolutions.  Watching Hulu seems a bit CPU-limited, but now we can say it's no worse than an Atom... Maybe you need to port AROS to it? :>
 

Offline bloodline

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Re: Anyone have iBook schematics - or a board?
« Reply #6 on: April 05, 2009, 01:01:34 AM »
My G4 has the maximum 1.25Gigs installed... To be fair the Atom isn't much better, but it is better and uses a lot less power :-)