[blech01]

I just sent an iBook in for repair and it had its logic board, hard drive, and flex cable replaced.

I'm trying to figure out what caused this damage. Any speculation?

Is it possible that bad memory did this?

What would a bad memory stick do to a computer?

[Detrius]

Bad memory would cause the thing to crash, and could potentially corrupt data on the hard drive. However, it would not make the hard drive go bad. I think that whoever fixed it couldn't figure out what was wrong with it and just replaced everything that could be causing the problem.

[ghporter]

Bad memory will screw up running programs or processes, and potentially it can mess up swap files for virtual memory (yes, Macs do that, but very well, thank you). It could even cause the machine not to start. If the computer starts at all (and doesn't smoke or burn up), bad memory CANNOT harm the hardware.

I've been on the technician end of electronics maintenance for a long, long time, and I've worked with a huge number of other people, some of whom did not really deserve the title "technician." The appropriate thing to do when you can't figure out what's wrong is to tell the customer "I can't figure out what's wrong." and then look for higher-level guidance, like asking Apple about the problem. Of course a worker doesn't look like a super technician if he says that; he just looks human. This is a problem for a lot of people...