[adrian1963]

Hi all.

my repair lasted just over three weeks bfore geting the familiar lines accross the screen and video balck out symptoms.

I've just given it another blast with my heat gun, this time keeping the heat on for about 40 seconds after the peice of solder i placed on the chip melted (low setting on 1500W gun)

its working again,

FYI i used the ifixit guide for removing the bottom shield:
iBook G3 12" Disassembly: Installing Bottom Shield - Removing Battery (page 1/6)

I used a brown raw plug split down the middle as a tool to free the plastic body (stronger than the bic pen top)

thanks again everyone

keep on ibookin'

[raynman]

I have been researching this problem for some time, now. Own an ibook 800mhz with typical video/crash/lockup problems alleviated somewhat by significant pressure to left of the trackpad.

I've seen a website for a firm in Arizona that does reflows on these chips very reasonably ($50 + shpg) through eBay auctions. They claim 100% success on these ibboks with the ATI chip problem. I read in another forum of an ibook owner that had already had two logicboards repaired through them. For me (conservative old guy - my first computer was a mac plus) this sounds more appealing that torching my ibook with a heatgun. BUT, I've got the bottom off; my buddy owns a heat gun he offered to lend me...

In case anyone is interested in the reflow outfit they are www.firstphasetech.com and the ebay seller ID is tom1ptech; look for the listing as "ATI Video Chip Apple Ibook repair Radeon Mobility"

I have no connection to or financial interest in, or even first hand knowledge of this company, but wanted to offer it up for those who lack the nerve to melt their own ibook, and might consider this a reasonable repair option.

Wish me luck (torch or pay???)!

raynman

[Will C]

I know this thread is about reflowing the video chip, but how about the firewire chip? - if there is a single device.

My iBook 500 FW port has not worked for a few years. I have tried all the PRAM zaps, re-installs, shutdowns, depowers etc to no avail. I do get power from the the port and the system profiler 'sees' the port though it does not see anything connected to it.

What do people think - or should I just sell my old iBook with a blown FW port?

TIA

[ddelisle42]

Just wanted to thank everyone here for the great tips. I had a dual-usb 700Mhz iBook with this problem, and this solution worked perfectly. I used a hobby-type heat gun to reflow the solder. If the laser thermometer I have is to be believed, I only managed to get the chip up to about 190C, but that was sufficient. Slapped everything back together and it booted on the first try.
Beautiful work figuring this out. Much thanks all around.

[Kai_taugenichts]

It Sounded so amazing incredible, but :
IT WORKS
So lets see, I read it several times, before I bought the Heatgun. At least, when there is nothing to loose, the best option.
I deinstalled the motherboard compleatly, then covered the rest of the motherboard with black foil and started carfully heating. the Idea with the solder on top is a very good reference, so I heated until it melted and for 20 seconds longer. I heard the chip sinking, so I stopped. A clean and silent place is very helpful.
Reconnected the motherboard and there it was again!
I want to thank you all for the nice and detailed Tips and hopefuly this can realive other nice macs. in Fact it is a good machine!
THANK YOU!!!

By the Way, loosing the screen does not mean loosing Data, you can take out the hard disk, put it in an external FireWire Box and use it as a start Disk in any other mac. The Idea with the server is also not bad.

Bueno,
before you trash your MAC (the xBox 360 has the same Problem!) there is a nice Movie at :
http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...ir%20fix&hl=en

Also see :
http://geektechnique.org/projectlab/...c-board-repair

Think and ask a friend if you ar not shure, it is a good solution and not that hard to be done!

Thank you all and see you with the next bug !

kai

[raynman]

Well. I finally got the guts and the heatgun, and BY GOLLY! IT WORKS! I performed this miracle following the instructions provided by Guy Kuo, and my ibook is, at this moment, loading OSX 10.3 successfully. Prior to this Heat Trick, I could barely get the ibook to boot by holding significant pressure to the left of the trackpad, but it has run flawlessly for over twenty minutes now!

I did the process almost verbatim the instructions of Guy, except that I left the heatgun close for nearly two minutes before slowly backing away to gradually reduce heat. I did not remove the board, but did open the screen and set the keyboard face-down over the edge of a counter so that the heat did not affect the LCD (I just heard the chime of my happy ibook rebooting for the next install step!) It got warm inside the body of the ibook. I left it set for 5 minutes before turning it over to try booting, and the palmrest to the left of the touchpad was still warm then!

I took some photos of the process, but since I was working alone, I have no photos of the heatgun actually in use (not enough hands). But, if anyone wants to see how I masked off the remainder of the logicboard I would be willing to email photos.

I hereby make all the usual disclaimers.... blah, blah! if you torch your kitchen or ruin your mac, it's NOT my fault. but if you were planning on stripping it out for parts (as I was close to doing before I found these posts online), what have you got to lose by trying this first?

I will keep you posted on future developments.

Thanks again, Guy!

raynman

[CalMagwithD]

Hey, fabulous idea. I kinda had an idea along similar lines when I fixed my first laptop. I knew there must've been a loose component/solder of some sort inside the laptop, and I was thinking that I might've just had to do this. Luckily, it just turned out that the CPU was a bit loose.

Although lots of people are having success, one CRUCIAL thing to do is to try to heat everything up as slowly as possible. The foil paper was a great idear by that one reader to help avoid heating up unnecessary components. Putting a coin on top of the chip is a good idea to spread heat, since it probably is made up of ceramic, which doesn't really spread heat too well.

But what I'd really recommend is to RUN the laptop (sans foil paper) first, just to allow it to heat up, then disconnect it and place the foil paper. Running the laptop first will allow it to heat up a bit, and therefore there'll be less of a heat shock when you first whip out the blow torch

[gh3]

Hi, i've just bought a faulty ibook g3 500.

I can start it, i heard the boot sound, but the screen is blank.

So i thonk about the infamouse problem of the GPU, but i have to ask a thing when your ibook had this problem the apple logo behind the lcd was lighted or not?

My one isn't lighted at all, and I started to thing about the possibility that my problem isn't only the gpu, due to this fact.

Anyone could give me a tip about this?

Thanks in advance.

[raynman]

to gh3,

...the apple logo is lit by the same light which provides light to the screen (which was not lit on my machine when it had the graphic problem), check for screen backlight failure by shining a bright flashlight from behind the apple logo, through the screen. If a faint screen image is visible, it may indicate a backlight that needs replacement. My screen had NO image whatsoever with flashlight. Also, if I booted my ibook while holding some strong pressure just the the left of the mousepad, it would begin to show screen images, but then show some garbled lines, then totally blank screen again shortly after releasing the pressure (this is the reasoning behind the "shim" remedies)

My G3 ibook worked for 6 days after the initial repair (2-22-07; see above in this thread) while I was carrying the ibook around my house checking wifi coverage; I probably flexed the casing, and stressed the logicboard. So, I dismantled the ibook again (I'm getting pretty fast with that by now) and re-applied heat, a bit closer for a bit longer this time, PLUS applied a shim composed of a piece of a CD over the chip, re-assembled, and I have had a running ibook for 4 more days now, without any signs of failure.

hoping for a "total cure" this time.

raynman

[Guy Kuo]

:-)

[unisphere]

it took a few tries, but i think i got it! the first 2 (maybe 3) times i used the heat gun on the 750 degree setting for approximately 2 minutes. the solder on top liquified, but apparantly the ball solder under the chip didnt get hot enough. then i finally upped the gun to 1500 degrees and left the heat on the chip for about 45 seconds after the solder on top melted. so far so good!

[WJMoore]

Hi guys,
Looks like I'm going to have to perform this operation on a friends iBook. I've had it apart already and on top of the graphics chip is a yellow heat transfer compound. It seems very brittle and would probably disintegrate if I took it off. Has anyone else encountered this and if so what did you replace it with?

[unisphere]

i used a knife to get under it and got it off in two pieces.

edit: turns out my repair only lasted a week...i just tried it again, so we'll see how long it holds this time.

edit2: up and running again. hopefully longer this time...i thinki was a little too rough with the ibook previously..

edit 3: doesnt seem to want to stay fixed...i added a couple thin cardboard shims and now its being consistant...

[imacfly]

Are the torches being used standard Benzomatic or the Map gas variety? Or something else?

[Guy Kuo]

HEAT GUN. Not torch. A gas torch very easily gets too hot. I've tried it that way as well and a heat gun is MUCH easier to control.

[Griffer]

Fantastic! Did this on a mates dead ibook, and it worked wopee .

Sadly my old ibook seems to suffer from a loose cpu (it shuts down after being on for a short whil), is there a similiar way to fix that issue?

[imacfly]

Originally Posted by Guy Kuo 

HEAT GUN. Not torch. A gas torch very easily gets too hot. I've tried it that way as well and a heat gun is MUCH easier to control.

Somebody here mentioned a torch, I believe. Maybe I just responded to the wrong message... sorry.

[sferic]

Snagged a 12" 800 Mhz w/ 640 MB ram / 32 MB vram in nice shape knowing it had bad
video for $120 - would display desktop 1 out of 4 tries but various video crashes
< 15 min - have a 60 Watt Soldering Iron [big pencil type] I thought I'd try - took
back skin & RF shield off - video package is different ~ has rectangular ATI 7500 w/
2 square Samsung vram chips (and one teeny surface mount capacitor in far corner)
underneath yellow thermal foam surrounded by thin clear plastic square - cut 1/4"
thick copper plate to roughly 1" square - drilled v. small holes in center of plate
with drill press to facilitate pounding in a medium small screwdriver that matched
tip of Soldering Iron - eventually got a 'friction fit' where Iron would balance
upright even w/ heavy cord - dished hole side of plate w/ die grinder in drill press - put closed laptop on carpeted floor - positioned plate & fired the Iron up
- heated up pretty slowly - applied lots of solder around Iron/Plate interface to
improve thermal transfer (reason for dishing plate) let cook for 4 hours - using
cheap IR thermometer guessing board temps nearby reached 250F - surface of plate
~ 375F - clear plastic surround barely singed ! - let cool for 1/2 hour - teeny
capacitor ok ! - laptop works great ! --- going away on vacation so won't be able to reply to comments any time soon - some notes : Big Soldering Irons like I used are
expensive & rare (mine a 60w HexAcoN Roselle Park N.J.) you could use 5 'el cheapo
pencil type irons etc. [I wouldn't use 'acid core' or plumbers solder ~ I also wouldn't use an aluminum plate] - perhaps a silver dollar and a nest of dollar store irons is the safer ghetto repair - good luck !

[ashley92]

I must say after reading this I was totally inspired. I have tried fixing my ibook with shims but unfortunately they were only temporary fixes. My boyfriend bought me a new macbook a couple of weeks ago but my old ibook looked so sad sitting across the room dead to the world. So about a week ago, I took my ibook apart and wihtout anything to lose I took the heat gun and blasted away with no idea of what I was doing. I applied heat to the video card for a couple of minutes, let my laptop sit for about a half hour and then attempted to try to boot her up. I must say that I was very surprised to find that a) I hadnt absolutely ruined her in my fix attempt and b) that the friggin thing booted up. She has been running perfectly for over a week now. Anyways, thanks for the genious ideas! I think that she might be fixed for good (well atleast for awhile)

[mattkime]

i had an ibook with the logic bard problem. i made a shim over the GPU which worked fine but i didn't consider it a long term fix. i picked up a heat gun from home depot, read and reread the above directions and killed my ibook. i'm really not sure where i made my mistake. maybe i didn't make any and this logic board just wouldn't reflow. anyway, just leaving a word to the wise - you can fail at this.

[seanc]

I failed this, but only because i poked my GPU and it moved. It was OK before that, it just wouldn't stay permanently fixed.