yeago works

This is a write-up of my trials regarding my 12” G4 iBook.

It all began when a piece of envelope was sticking in front of my slot-loading combodrive and I loaded it. The paper stayed and the mechanics of the drive became screwed up.

I purchased a new combodrive at PowerBookMedic.com. I opened it up and put it in but it didn’t work. But the semester was upon me and I didn’t have time to open it back up to find out why it didn’t work and I couldn’t risk not having a computer. So I set it aside until Graduation. What I found peculiar was while the device made no noise when I powered-up, it showed up in my System Profiler. This I found odd.

Cracking the shell

There are instructions online for disassembling your iBook. I recommend you google around for any of these before and while you are doing so, if you have another computer handy. As for me, I didn’t. I simply gathered some tools: a small philips screwdrive, a small flat screwdriver, and a chisel for prying open the case, and some forceps or tweezers for removing wire-connectors such as those for the speakers, etc. I keep a few rare earth magnets handy as screw-holders. I tend to end up with (no kidding) about 10 spare screws whenever I take apart an iBook.

A mis-connected cable

Some folks on freenode told me that the combodrive jumpers were not set correctly, or that there was otherwise an error with the device and to send it back to powerbookmedic. As with most first-advice at IRC, it was wrong. I called powerbookmedic and they said to check the cable connecting the combodrive, because even a hair-line fracture in it could make it non-functional yet still show up. Sure enough, I opened my iBook and pushed the cable in a bit more and it worked great.

For the first time in nearly a year my computer had a working combodrive in it, and I was excited to be able to play StarCraft again (haven’t been able to run it from an image, for some reason).

Then the bad news

I went out to dinner, thrilled at my accomplishment of being able to repair my iBook myself. I came back to a very strange smell in the room, and a completely dead iBook. When I left, I opened the case and let iTunes run so that some FTP’ing I was doing would not get interrupted. Eventually it turned out the strange smell was coming from my iBook. I was crushed–I realized that I left my iBook sitting on the towel I had used while working on it–I am not sure if this is what caused the diode to fry, but its my best guess so far.

I cracked it open to discover a burned out diode labelled Q81–more or less near the Hard Drive. (Picture). Folks at IRC are saying that I should probably just order another motherboard.