Be Excellent To Each Other

Looks like the logic board in the Macbook Pro is fucked (15.4 early 2008). No screen, no chimes, PRAM reset makes no odds and neither does fiddling with the RAM.

Two repair companies emailed. This will be expensive right?

I need the bloody thing working. If it was a PC I'd be straight down to PC World to buy a replacement.

Anyone have any experiences? I looked at buying the board myself but some places were quoting as high as 700 quid and time is of the essence.

Of course if the repair is 700 quid, fuck it, new laptop. Grrr!

Apols for new thread rather than the existing Mac thread but I'll be reading this on my phone as obviously I am without a laptop.

I strongly suspect you will be into "new laptop" territory. It'd be worth taking it to an Apple store and asking for a quote from the Genius Bar though, as well as third parties.

Yeah, take it to the genius bar in case they can do anything.

You don't have applecare I take it? (maybe I should get that?)

Fuck it, wrote a reply and lost it. Not my day.

In short:

Booked Apple appoiontment for tommorrow morning. Lucky they have one of their scary shops in Soton.

Logic boards cheaper from Hong Kong so could repair laptop and sell on at a later date.

There was an NVIDIA problem on my gen of Macbook. Faint chance it might be a failed GFX card in which case replacement should be free. But I doubt it.

Sorry for short reply. Did it once nicely but laptop lost it (some shitty Windows box on a dodgy net connection)

Bloody hell, hope it doesn't end up being too costly for you.

Good luck tomorrow at the Apple Store, Chinny. They may seem like a nest of smugness, but I've actually always found their customer service to be second-to-none, so you never know, you might be lucky.

Buy a new one and send the dead one to me

Actually - good luck, it must suck to have your main machine die on you. Perhaps you should contemplate having a backup one, like I'm sure you have with cameras.

Cancelled the store appointment. Looking online it was evident they would unlikely to be able to diagnose the fault without sending it away and repair would be costly and slow.

Went up to an Apple Authorised company in Basingstoke who diagnosed it in 2 minutes (he gets 2 of my models through with the same problem each week!!!). It's the power management module that has failed. This may possibly explain why it has a habit of killing batteries.

£477.09 inc VAT and labour. Will be hopefully be repaired by tomorrow afternoon. The guy was very nice, very knowledgeable, and was not wearing a polo neck or a Mac Store smile.

Well I have the 8 core here in the office. But the office is 45 miles from home. So evenings and weekends I need the Macbook.

Nice one, Chinny. Glad you got it sorted.



What model is yours, I believe we have roughly the same. Yours was a 15" refurb, right?

Oh, Mac guys top tip for Mac owners.

If you don't need phone support, don't buy Applecare at the time of purchase. However do buy it about a month before your warranty runs out.

Your mother likes 15" roughly up her furb.

Ouch!

Thought it would be a power problem though, with no startup chime or anything.

15" Early 2008.

He also gets a fair number through with graphics cards failures, but these get repaired for free.

HD and DVD power up though. But nothing to the mainboard it seems.

Your mother lost her ExpressCard/34 expansion slot in her latest revision.

Why? It doesn't change the warranty period (although it does mean that if your plans change in the first year, you're not already committed to AppleCare).

I don't have AppleCare on my Macbook and it's too late now to buy it (plus I've been in the guts of the thing swapping the optical drive for an SSD). I wonder if that'll be an expensive mistake one day. If the iPhone 5 doesn't look compelling, I'd consider it on my current iPhone 4, as I'd be keeping it another year.

The last pre-Unibody model, right?

Don't! This really hacks me off as I use that Expresscard most days. My main camera shoots onto them.

The 17" still has them but I have no need of a 17".

I think the implication is that it works out cheaper. The guy showed me a chart with the options on it.

Yes, mine is the last one before they changed the design. Which was dandy because I didn't like what they did with the new keyboard.

As for Applecare, I would have been covered right now and they probably wouldn't have been such arseholes when my first battery expired a week outside of warranty.

Uhh, it does? News to me. Citation?

Fair enough. I really like the new keyboard, myself.

My MacBook's ExpressCard slot has remained empty since the day I bought it. I still have no idea what I'd actually put in there.

Mine too, I've considered getting an SD/XD card reader in there but I have usb readers anyway. It's a shame you cant whack an SSD drive in there.

The old keyboard was really, really nice though. Much as I love the new Apple keyboard (to be fair, I only have the desktop one, but I'd imagine it's much the same), occasionally revisiting the keyboard on my aluminium Powerbook G4 (and thus the same body and keyboard as chinny's) is always a joyous occasion.

What would "norms" use in the card slot? How about an ESATA card for starters? I have an SSD in an enclosure for video purposes and its fast!

The citation is back in Basingstoke.

Looking at the card, he's having to replace the whole logic board not just the power bit. So given some places were quoting upwards of 600 quid for a board that isn't bad. The only way to do it cheaper would be to order one from Hong Kong, wait forever (3 weeks and counting for my last DX order), have to fit it myself and then have no comeback if I Coffey it.

It might also mean the annoying display bug goes away. Sometimes when you power up alternate lines of the LED backlight don't go to full brightness, usually solved by closing the lid and opening again. A known problem which Apple even went to the extent of locking the 100 page thread about it on their forum.

Off the top of my head: eSATA, as you note. A memory card reader (SD, normally, of course; I don't think CF would fit inside the enclosure). A native SSD. A 3G modem card. A PCIExpress bridge to an external graphics card, either for performance or multi-monitor.

You'd be wrong about the CF to Expresscard adaptor. Seen them with me own eyes so I have. They have to "stick out".

I use expresscard to SDHC adaptors for my camera. Although if the expresscard uses the USB portion, you can buy a USB adaptor for a few quid.

Of course if you plug a full expresscard into a USB adaptor nothing happens. Which has given me a few heart in mouth moments until I realised what I had done.

Oh yeah, sure, but then you've not really achieved much more than buying a (cheaper) USB reader -- unless you really, really care about transfer rates I suppose.

Apple's ordering system fucked up which means no repair until tomorrow, and Thursday is the earliest I'll get it now as somebody just booked a shoot for tomorrow afternoon.

Hmmfff!

I've broken my rule and have enabled the wireless on the Revo so at least I'll have net access in the evenings. Bloody thing installed 90 updates when I did it! So much for my locked down system.

Put the fucker in the oven.

It's fairly easy to turn off the automatic updates in the Security Center.
Bit late now, though.

Didn't think about it until it took 20 minutes to shut down. As obviously its never had the wireless enabled previously it wasn't turned off. It is now.

Don't suppose the updates will do any harm.

If you're going to be browsing the net, I imagine they'll have done some good.

Quite. I'd go the whole hog and stick the entirely free Microsoft Security Essentials on there whilst I was at it, just to be on the safe side.

It won't need to now. Macbook is back.

The part turned up at 3pm. I phoned the guy by chance and much to his surprise he'd just received a same day delivery with all 3 parts he had ordered.

He did my board straight away so I drove from where I was and half hour later it was back with me.

Interestingly one of the things the machine had been doing was waiting for about 15-20 seconds on the white screen when first turned on. That's back to a few seconds now. May have been a symptom.

No no no no no.

Want nothing slowing that box down. It was online just for an emergency. Webmail and BEEX, that was it. The wireless will now be turned off again.

Fair enough, but MS SE is not exactly Norton Antivirus when it comes to hogging system resources. I'd say that it's probably the best antivirus solution out there for consumer PCs.

Some of my MAME stuff uses nearly all of the CPU (since MAME can only use one core). So pretty much any extras are out unless I want to start skipping frames.

The extras would, of course, run on the other core.

You would hope. Doesn't always work out that way due to other factors.

That said its academic. Its my emulation box which was online online due to exceptional circumstances. As long as you are careful in those circumstances you should be fine.

Just so glad to have the Mac back. Totally new motherboard in it. Firewire ports are as tight as (insert inappropriate comment here -Ed) as the main ports are all part of the board.

Was told there was alot of problems with this model that were never officially acknowledged. But he see's the patterns in certain types of failures with the 2008 pre-unibody 15 inchers.

Oh shit, every piece of software now thinks it is unlicensed.

Ah, Apple. Nice shiny cases, same old shit underneath. One of my workmates splashed out on a Macbook about 18 months ago, and has had no end of problems with it. Got it new, direct from Apple. It's been back twice already.

Really? From these two data points you can deduce across-the-industry return rates? Tell me more!

Joking aside, I hear a lot of this "Apple must be crap" stuff; I've never seen any numbers to back it up or refute it. Do you have any?

No evidence for this at all. Although the repairer did say the pre unibody Pro's are the units he see's the most of due to the NVIDIA problem (acknowledged by Apple) and the power problem (not acknowledged).

Just been trying to explain to one company that I need to reactivate my software. They tell me if I want to install it on a new computer I must buy it again, I point out its not a new computer. After some fuss they begrudgingly let me reactivate although they manage to make me feel like I am stealing the shoes from their childrens feet. FFS its not a new computer just a new motherboard! Don't blame me if you've fixed your serial number system to the motherboard ID!

Only Mac that I've found problematic was my eMac, my first 'modern day' Mac. But then it was a rickety old model even when I first received it, and Apple recognised that the flyback transformer fuxxoring was a common design fault.

I splashed out on a MacBook 16 months ago, and have had no problems with it (touch wood). Got it refurb, direct from Apple. It's not been back.

Is that anecdote neutralisation?

Anecdote antidote

I would say get a PC but you already have if you buy a new mac.

I've only ever had one problem with any of the Macs I've owned and that was the Powerbook G4 I bought in late 2003. One of the speakers didn't work. Since it never worked, right out of the box, Apple classified the whole machine as DOA and sent a courier out to collect it from me whilst they sent me a new one. I wouldn't have minded, but I bought it built to order from their website and it had already taken a fortnight to reach me. I had to wait another fortnight before getting the new one.

They're very well built machines, but inevitably you're going to get the occasional duffer. Happens with all electronics.

My current self-built PC is as stable as any Mac I've owned, because I've used high quality bits throughout. Even then, the initial top-of-the-line ASUS motherboard I picked was DOA, so the one I'm using now is it's replacement. So far it's been absolutely perfect.