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

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

#191

Post by makomk »

cgio wrote: post #182
jrockway wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My thought while reading this was "this must be an article from the Daily Mail". Then I looked at the link's URL more carefully. FWIW, we were discussing incandescent bulbs, not CFLs, as referred to in your excerpt.

That was the first link I found btw. There are other links like the following from the Environmental Protection Agency http://www2.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl if you think there is something with the validity of the article linked previously. It raises the same issues. Furthermore, the discussion was not specifying incandescent, but I specified energy saving just in case.

Those are just precautionary measures for people who are really worried about minimizing their mercury exposure. It's not a big deal unless you're breaking CFLs on a regular basis or dealing with some of the older fluorescent tubes; the amount of mercury they contain is tiny.

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

#192

Post by Neeo »

tomwhipple wrote: post #88

See also http://support.apple.com/kb/TS4088?viewlocale=en_US&locale=e... I printed the article, the GPU kernel panic log and took them to the Genius bar. Apple replaced the mainboard for free, more than 3 years after the purchase. It took me more than a year of dealing with random crashes and several visits to the genius bar before I found this article. Though the downside is that you'd miss the excitement described…

I have searched the definition of existence out of this issue but have never found this article, if I had just seen this article before the 3 year mark. But I have already solved the issue by installing Linux and not installing the Nvidia driver. I will buy a new laptop soon anyways, but I will still run Linux tough. I will try OP's method when I get a new laptop.

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

#193

Post by cgio »

makomk wrote: post #191
cgio wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the first link I found btw. There are other links like the following from the Environmental Protection Agency http://www2.epa.gov/cfl/cleaning-broken-cfl if you think there is something with the validity of the article linked previously. It raises the same issues. Furthermore, the discussion was not specifying incandescent, but I specified energy saving just in case.

Those are just precautionary measures for people who are really worried about minimizing their mercury exposure. It's not a big deal unless you're breaking CFLs on a regular basis or dealing with some of the older fluorescent tubes; the amount of mercury they contain is tiny.

This is also explained in the last section of the EPA link. Nevertheless, it remains relevant in a discussion about putting bulbs in microwaves to have some fun. I would stick with incandescent, which apparently are also more fun.

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

#194

Post by midas007 »

vonmoltke wrote: post #79
bananas wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes exactly. This happens all too often unfortunately. It's why you didn't see anything BGA packaged in the defence industry for a number of years -- they are not mechanically stable. I did have a reference for this but I can't find it now. Also the multi-layer boards tend to bend when you repetitively heat/cool them resulting in the actual metal traces cracking inside. Sometimes there's enough contact after this ove…

> This happens all too often unfortunately. It's why you didn't see anything BGA packaged in the defence industry for a number of years -- they are not mechanically stable. I did have a reference for this but I can't find it now. There is also a problem with rework. BGAs are hard to get off the board without destroying the board in the process, especially on multi-layer boards. For cheap commercial boards where the a…

The rework gear is also a pain. Definitely the opposite of hackable.

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

#195

Post by mgkimsal »

iancarroll wrote: post #174
mst wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, you can , yes. But given he's a happy customer of their hands on service and didn't even mention the site, I'm not sure the answer you'll get will be terribly relevant.

Why does the store (sixrig) has ads on their site?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7372749

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

#196

Post by danmatan »

pyoung wrote: post #177
danmatan wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 mark…

Adding to the anecdotes[1], of the last 5 computers that I have owned, 0/2 of the Macs are still running, compared to 2/3 of the non-macs. Because of this, I refuse to ever purchase a used mac, the discount is not worth the risk, especially considering the fact that it's nearly impossible to repair them on your own. [1]Random idea for a website/service: Computer reliability statistics by model/year. Could be really u…

I still bought a Mac, just not a used one. A reliable machine so far, can't say the same about the charger cord.

Perhaps the used prices are propped up by a high number of units dying.

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

#197

Post by jclos »

MichaelGG wrote: post #151
cones688 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thinkpads?

I do not find Macs to be very "usable", and previous-gen ThinkPads outranked them in everything but the shiny-showing-off-at-starbucks metric. However, in the last generations, Lenovo has nerfed the ThinkPads (new ones don't even have a middle mouse area - no more buttons, either). They've also even put the logo upside down so that you can show it off at cafes.

Is there a Thinkpad model you would recommend for day-to-day use (mainly Java programming and LaTeX writing), that is light enough to be carried around daily?

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

#198

Post by caycep »

nobleach wrote: post #111
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....

I can confirm that my 2008 iMac had this same problem with the nVidia card. And yes, cooking it in the oven did bring it back long enough to grab the few items that I wanted. At the time, I read that it had to do with Apple switching to lead free solder. Sad to know I may face this with the 2011 MBP that I am typing this on (and I love so dearly)

fortunately, I had my mac setup with ssh enabled...so I was able to rsync it off to another computer off network. (Who needs graphics anyway?)

Apple support, to their credit, handled my case extremely well, even though I was out of warranty.

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

#199

Post by dfc »

PhantomGremlin wrote: post #186
prewett wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The X Windows experience on my MacBook Pro is great! I get a OS that does pretty much everything my ThinkPad with Linux did, plus: * wifi works out of the box and reconnects practically instantly out of sleep [1] * sleep works without me spending two weeks recompiling Gentoo with different kernel options and finally discovering some boot flag that worked until Ubuntu broke it in one of their updates * I don't need to…

Someone succinctly summarized the situation in a quip I found somewhere on the Interweb: The products Apple make are the closest thing to 'appliances' you can get in the computer world.

Appliances that make you look cool and signal to others that you "think different."

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

#200

Post by yardie »

specialist wrote: post #135
yardie wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I've talked to a few recovery experts. They told me taking the cover off destroys the drive. Apparantly the head has some tracks embedded in the cover. If it's not removed in a certain way you can rip the entire thing out.
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