Chosen Solution
Hi Guys, O.k Here goes, my macbook has really been through the wars after getting red wine spilt on it. I have personally given it an alchohol bath and clean the whole board top to bottom. it’s supposedley also had a reflow as I took it to a guy who did them and I also did the ‘oven trick’ several times. If I press the power button the two fans spin up for less that a second and nothing happens. However, If i place my finger on top of 2 resistors (circled in the pic) I am able to get it to start, it will then happily stay on and work as normal, unless it goes into sleep mode, if this happens for more than a minute or so I have to place my finger on the resistor again to make it start. This is my first issue. The guy that did the reflow mentioned something about it not having a decent ‘g3 on’ signal? and that it was unstable or something? I am pretty sure that some component has failed here and would really like someone capable of board level repairs to take a look.. The second issue has recently developed. The built in display started to turn itself on and off, while i had a 2nd display plugged in, and the mac would switch desktops between both displays as if I had unplugged the 2nd display, this gradually evolved into the internal display not working at all. Right now I can only use the external display although at the second of boot time The internal display does flash on for a moment as do the keyboard lights. Now when the machine is running I have NO trackpad, No Internal Keyboard and NO internal display. Ok, so here’e another strange thing. I found that if I hold my finger on the power button whilst connecting the internal battery and let go the machine then starts up with fans at full speed and boots up, like this the internal display works just fine no problems although still no keyboard/trackpad. I realise that this all sounds far fetched, but I don’t know exactly what I am doing, I know a fair bit about electronics but I am clearly not a mac expert. pretty happy that I at least got some life out of the thing that was previously thought completley dead. I really cannot afford a logic board right now and I hope that there may be someone out there that could nurse her back to life? many thanks for any assistance I may receive. Cheers, Brad, FL, USA
Isopropyl alcohol does a good job cutting through the oils & fats but it doesn’t do a good job with water soluble stuff like sugars & other solids, or dilute acids or bases. Using the oven or reflowing the chips doesn’t do much here if the issue is trace material altering the electrical properties of the circuit. Unless I saw some degrading of the solder joints some where it shouldn’t be needed. I always wash down my logic boards with distilled water (not tap!) so I can remove the water soluble stuff first and try to remove as much of the acids or bases of what was spilled off. Then I wash the board down with Isopropyl alcohol as it has a second property I like and that of a dryer to help in removing the water I had used or was spilled. Even still I let the board air dry in a sunny location for a day letting the IR of the suns rays warm the board causing any remaining moisture out. The fact you place your finger on the logic board alters things enough for it to start i think is a clue here were you need to focus. I suspect you over focused on the logic board and didn’t get to some of the spillage in other parts of the system. If your system was running at the time then your keyboard got hit. I would focus on cleaning it. Sorry to say this is a big job as you will need to take just about everything out to get to it. The first questions I have here is how long ago did this happen and did you take the keyboard apart already? If you didn’t strip it down thats were I would start, if you did then you may have a bad keyboard and/or ribbon assembly which you’ll need to swap out. As to the display issue that also supports more spillage into the lid/LCD area and/or bad LVDS cable. Bad G3 signal? Sorry that makes no sense here. Your system doesn’t have cellar service built-in. Do you think he was talking about your WiFi signal? That might be what he was talking about as the WiFi antennas are located in the lid. As you’re having display issues it could be related to the spillage into the lid/LCD. In any case you’ll need to inspect things here to see if they have spillage or damage. This time try cleaning with the distilled water then the Isopropyl alcohol and make sure you let things fully dry before powering up.
What I would like to know is if you are placing your fingers on top without or with (little) pressure on the resistors? What about touching only one of them? And I agree - I would not focus that much on the logic board, but on cleaning ports and plugs and the keyboard. If I am right, red wine does have a capillary effect, so it may “creep” under the connector of the LVDS cable etc. Once a while ago I had a “broken” keyboard - some keys did not work, others gave just nonsense characters back (on screen) and so on. I took out the keyboard and saw sand, hair etc. - after using a vacuum cleaner, it worked again as a charme … Regards, Stone
Try using 99.9% isopropyl alcohol then put motherboard in a sealed container full of white rice over night!this has worked well for me in the past.
Brad Holland, the two components are capacitors. They carry reference designator C9719 and C9715. Both of these are 2.2UF 100V 10% 1210 package caps. This will explain why it changes when you place your fingers on those, you are actually discharging the caps by doing so. If you can get your hand on a capacitance meter or ESR meter, you could check to see if they are doing their job. In absence of that, see if my wiki write up will help with a “all-or-nothing” test. " I can only use the external display although at the second of boot time The internal display does flash on for a moment as do the keyboard lights. Now when the machine is running I have NO trackpad, No Internal Keyboard and NO internal display." makes sense since both of those components are part of the LCD Backlight Driver circuit. Hope this helps, good luck
