Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

ales.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 204 posts

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#101

Post by danmatan »

JohnBooty wrote: post #90
mgkimsal wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was always told the benefit of Macs is that they hold their value. I don't think it's terribly true - never felt like it when I've come to sell.

Non-Mac laptops drop off in value even more quickly.

Anecdotally confirming. When shopping around for the past 10 years, I've usually bought used PCs and used parts, both desktops and laptops, but after deciding to try out a Mac in early 2012, buying used just didn't seem to be worth the discount.

It doesn't seem to be so bad right now, but part of this may be due to my insistence on getting at least 4GB of RAM for a MacBook Air, which was hard to find on the used market.

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#102

Post by mikeash »

mgkimsal wrote: post #75
chiph wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a new board in mine as well. Without AppleCare, it would have been $550. Estimated value of the machine, from CL, eBay, etc: $575. The downside to Macs having become popular is the severe price drop in the used market.

I was always told the benefit of Macs is that they hold their value. I don't think it's terribly true - never felt like it when I've come to sell.

It's not that they "hold their value", which implies they'd sell for something similar to the original purchase price, and that's crazy. Rather it's that their value drops considerably more slowly than the average computer. A 3-year-old Mac is still worth only a fraction of the original purchase price, but a typical computer is worth only a fraction of that fraction.

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#103

Post by jarin »

throwwit wrote: post #39
ics wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the alloy, tin/bismuth will melt around 140C. I would've expected over 180C to be necessary as well though. Sn63Pb37 is very common and melts at 180C, but since it has lead I don't think it's used much in large scale electronics manufacture.

I read somewhere the xbox gpu problem was a result of the lead-free solder used to meet environmental regulations.

THANKS OBAMA

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#104

Post by mikeash »

rizalp wrote: post #97
Pitarou wrote: post #7

Do NOT try this with a microwave oven. If you do, there will be a bad smell, and lots of sounds and lights, and you will not read Hacker News today.

Sorry, but why? Why it is bad to do this with Microwave Oven rather than conventional oven?

Microwaves interact with metal in interesting ways. It will likely induce high voltages in the computer's wiring, causing the chips to release all of their magic smoke.

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#105

Post by martydill »

This has been an issue as far back as a decade ago with G3 iBooks. I had my G3 800's logic board replaced twice under warranty, but it failed again after that. The 'hot coin on the gpu' trick solved the problem, albeit temporarily.

http://forums.macnn.com/69/mac-notebooks/210232/diy-ibook-du...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBook#Quality_issues

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#106

Post by slantyyz »

johnchristopher wrote: post #52
mgkimsal wrote: post #35

"with people having apparently similar but in reality completely unrelated problems" Not sure what he was reading - this is a known problem with at least many early 2011 MBP - I had one (still do - it's in the closet). Apple is refusing to acknowledge this as a problem, and will offer to replace the motherboard (or something like that) for ... $300 and approximately 5 business days. From what I've read, whatever they…

> Source: apple forums and http://mbp2011.com Wow: “The problem might be on the GPU” Said the “Genius”. That’s exactly what I was hoping to hear (he didn’t mentioned this until I pushed them this far.) So I replied, “You all knew exactly what’s going on here and you intentionally kept this from the customers, right?” Right this moment, the “Genius” has left. That's insane.

There's a lot of variability these stories in terms of how you're treated by a Genius when you take your computer in. When I took my problematic 2011 MBP in, they pretty quickly determined that it was a motherboard issue and replaced it.

Two months after my motherboard was replaced the video glitches started appearing again.

Coincidentally (or not?) it happens that I use Coda every day, and Coda forced Macs (inadvertently, apparently -- Panic used Apple's guidelines on how to implement this "gracefully", but Apple's flag was buggy) to use the discrete card all the time.

Interestingly enough, once Panic disabled the 'use discrete gpu' flag in Coda, my screen glitch problems basically went away on my new motherboard.

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#107

Post by slantyyz »

caycep wrote: post #95

This is due to failure of the ball grid array solder, I'm assuming? Most of what I've seen has been due to failure of the video card - I think the nvidia ones were notorious on certain models, but I've had it happen on my 2009 iMac with a radeon card. Sort of what sold me on integrated GPU's as being the ideal in these form factors - less parts to blow up in your face....

>> This is due to failure of the ball grid array solder, I'm assuming?

On the longest 2011 MBP GPU issue discussion on Apple Support, there was some speculation that the switch to weaker "green" solder by Apple caused the issue. Some people had their GPUs reflowed at an independent service center, and it fixed the problem, but for others, it was only a short term fix, with the GPU glitch returning after a few weeks/months.

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#108

Post by danmatan »

jmpe wrote: post #21
jonmrodriguez wrote: post #3

How does this work? Is the idea that there's a loose chip, and you're reflowing the solder to re-attach it? Relatedly, one of my friends successfully revived a bricked playstation by heating up the motherboard with a heat gun.

This sounds like a BGA issue. They also had the on PS3/4 and XBox if I'm not mistaking. The chip has a grid of small solder balls on the bottom instead of pins sticking out. Due to thermal differences during operation some rows can experience mechanical stress due to uneven heating of the device. When there are cracks the contact disconnects from the board. Some images here: http://www.playbackups.com/Playstation3-xb…

And from a manufacturing/engineering point-of-view (which I am neither), I guess it's really hard to solve this problem.

You have some unpredictable 1/100 or 1/1000 defect that occurs long after production and sale.

Just how do you go about isolating the cause, and testing a solution? Make 5 changes, and put through a production batch of 1000 units, and then do accelerated testing? If 5 fail from one batch, and 2 from the rest, is there even enough statistical power to confirm that you've come across a solution? And you just burned through 5000 units.

Sounds like fun trying to solve this kind of problem.

Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven

#110

Post by slantyyz »

bananas wrote: post #33
Kliment wrote: post #2

You might want to get rid of that Vertex 2 as soon as reasonably possible. It has an issue where at some point when switched on or resumed from sleep it will corrupt all your data and refuse to boot. Some have a different bug where it will silently corrupt some of your data and the only way to find out is by the HDD light being on for longer than usual. Back up your data and get rid of it. I had it happen to me twice…

+1 for that. Had exactly the same trouble. Moved to Samsung 840 Pro since - everything works just fine.

I had one Vertex 2 just up and die, but another one is still going strong on Macbook, but that one's just for surfing, so it's not critical if I experience a catastrophic data loss.

Will have to agree with you, the 840 Pro's are great.

Post reply on HN