Earlier quoted context omitted.
It isn't the best of ideas to cook electronics in a oven also used for food.
One detail I forgot to mention: this was at the end of a very successful night of drinking.
Ah, now it all makes sense.
How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven
131–140 of 204 posts
Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven
#132Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven
#133Do 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?
This should give you an idea why you can't use a microwave oven - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7vGZcbkNtCw
Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven
#134"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…
I experienced the exact same problems with my early 2011 MBP, and the blue screen of death was fixed with a motherboard replacement. The failing graphics card also seem to have done damage to my Apple Thunderbolt Display, but that is incredibly hard to prove so I do not know if Apple will fix that for free.
I must say that this is a bit disappointing for a $3500 piece of hardware. There should be recall procedures for electronics like this as well to protect customers from faulty production.
Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds like the old harddrive trick where a harddrive refuses to start until it's cold enough.
I unbroke an iPod 5G by slamming it into my desk fairly hard. That was about 3 years ago and it's still working. Something about the HDD bearings seizing because of shock. I have a Seagate HDD in the freezer for 2 years now. Every method of recovery I've used has been unsuccessful. I'm waiting to send it into a recovery service, and $1500+ that I haven't got lying around.
While doing desktop support, one of my Mac user's hard drive was failing, wouldn't spin up at boot. So you had to help spin it up. One trick was to give the HDD housing a rotation jerk the moment you turn on power. Another was to use a pencil eraser to spin the exposed spindle, also during power on.
Good times.
Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven
#136This was a "well-known" (quoted because it's well known as far as enthusiast communities are concerned) fix attempt for discrete GPU cards on desktops. I've seen a lot of success stories where old GPUs (think GTX 8800) would crap out; owner would take off the shroud, heatsink, and any other removable parts, put it in the oven for a few minutes, and boom, reflowed solder fixed the issue.
Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven
#137I think this process is really baking out moisture as the PCBA is not in the oven long enough to get to temperature and the temperature is not hot enough to reflow the solder.
Most of the components on the board are not hermetically packaged and there probably are moisture sensitive parts on the PCBA. So the baking at 170C for 7 minutes is essentially a drying process.
Also, I think Apple probably has to be ROHS compliant and that means they have to use lead-free TnSn solder. The transition temperature for lead-free solder is typically about 20C higher than normal leaded solders.
Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven
#138How 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.
The problem is that NVidia switched the solder connecting their chips to the board without switching the potting material they used to something with the new thermal expansion coefficient. So as the chip changes temperature the thermal stress is turned into mechanical stress, until one of the contacts breaks. The fix in the article will re-form the attachment, but you'll still be accumulating stress and it will eventually fail again.
Google for "bumpgate" for more information about this than you'd ever want.
Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven
#139If it's reflowing then couldn't the same be accomplished with more focused application of a heat gun?
Re: How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven
#140That reminds me of http://viennot.biz/reflow_oven.pdf