Fried Logic Board, Powerbook 1.33 12", what to do?

[dunnstable]

I took my G4 12" Powerbook 1.33 Ghz in for repairs after it refused to boot. Apparently the logic board and rear speakers (are there front speakers?) are fried. The shop is quoting £700 to replace it, which I know is slightly on the high side. It's 18 months old now, so six months out of Applecare.

My question, what to do? With education discount, I can get a 2.0 Macbook, 1 gig ram, 80gb hd for £860 or so. That also includes three years Applecare, a big bonus (as I'm discovering). Would I be able to sell the broken PB for anything on Ebay? Maybe someone would want it for parts.

Thoughts?

 

[California]

I took my G4 12" Powerbook 1.33 Ghz in for repairs after it refused to boot. Apparently the logic board and rear speakers (are there front speakers?) are fried. The shop is quoting £700 to replace it, which I know is slightly on the high side. It's 18 months old now, so six months out of Applecare.

My question, what to do? With education discount, I can get a 2.0 Macbook, 1 gig ram, 80gb hd for £860 or so. That also includes three years Applecare, a big bonus (as I'm discovering). Would I be able to sell the broken PB for anything on Ebay? Maybe someone would want it for parts.

Thoughts?

What exactly fried and how did it fry? Apple actually has an out of warranty powerbook program for logic boards in the U.S. -- at least they did earlier this year. YOu can buy a new board on eBay, too at much less than you are being quoted. Or you could send it to Daystar for a CPU upgrade to 1.67ghz and see if they can't fix it at the same time. Personally I love the 12" PB so much that I now have two of them!

 

[dunnstable]

What exactly fried and how did it fry? Apple actually has an out of warranty powerbook program for logic boards in the U.S. -- at least they did earlier this year. YOu can buy a new board on eBay, too at much less than you are being quoted. Or you could send it to Daystar for a CPU upgrade to 1.67ghz and see if they can't fix it at the same time. Personally I love the 12" PB so much that I now have two of them!

How fried? Not exactly sure, that's just what they told me on the phone. The computer's still at the shop getting the HD backed up. Maybe when they give it back the actual tech report will be more specific. Is there a certain kind of fried that's better than another? Something that's reparable without replacing the logic board, I presume?

From what I've seen in my fifteen minute search, it looks like there's an extenced logic board repair program on the 15" PBs and on some iBooks, but I haven't seen anything for the 12". If you've seen it, let me know.

Buying a new logic board would run $599 from IFixit. I figure with shipping, tax, and who knows about duty, that would probably end up being £450, maybe even £500, by the time it got here. Still not sure if that makes sense over buying a new Macbook. Well, have to think about it a bit.

Thanks for the feedback

Cheers

Edit: How'd it happen? Not entirely sure there either. Two weeks ago it started making a loud "clicking" noise, like what you get if the keyboard's stuck. This was intermittent. Did the whole reset PRAM, NVRAM (sp?), disk util thing. Didn't have my Tiger disk on me, so I wasn't able to run hardware diagnostics. Then the fan started making a loud whining sound, as if it was running full-tilt. A few days after that, it wouldn't wake from sleep; I'd either have to use the control-command power combo or remove the battery to get it to restart. I got home the next day, installed the Tiger disk, set it as the startup disk, and restarted the computer. That was all she wrote. It would chime, show the grey splash screen, then shutdown. Off to the computer store after that.

 

[Music_Producer]

You'd be wasting your money if you got that PB fixed. Once something goes wrong and you fix it, eventually it always leads to something or the other. That's not even the point, the point is that its common sense to buy the macbook with applecare for the price you specified.

Yes, sell your pb off on ebay, you will be amazed at how many people will bid on it for parts. I sold my crapped out titanium powerbook on ebay for $650 (it was completely dead, i was expecting something like $250 for it!)

 

[California]

How fried? Not exactly sure, that's just what they told me on the phone. The computer's still at the shop getting the HD backed up. Maybe when they give it back the actual tech report will be more specific. Is there a certain kind of fried that's better than another? Something that's reparable without replacing the logic board, I presume?

From what I've seen in my fifteen minute search, it looks like there's an extenced logic board repair program on the 15" PBs and on some iBooks, but I haven't seen anything for the 12". If you've seen it, let me know.

Buying a new logic board would run $599 from IFixit. I figure with shipping, tax, and who knows about duty, that would probably end up being £450, maybe even £500, by the time it got here. Still not sure if that makes sense over buying a new Macbook. Well, have to think about it a bit.

Thanks for the feedback

Cheers

Edit: How'd it happen? Not entirely sure there either. Two weeks ago it started making a loud "clicking" noise, like what you get if the keyboard's stuck. This was intermittent. Did the whole reset PRAM, NVRAM (sp?), disk util thing. Didn't have my Tiger disk on me, so I wasn't able to run hardware diagnostics. Then the fan started making a loud whining sound, as if it was running full-tilt. A few days after that, it wouldn't wake from sleep; I'd either have to use the control-command power combo or remove the battery to get it to restart. I got home the next day, installed the Tiger disk, set it as the startup disk, and restarted the computer. That was all she wrote. It would chime, show the grey splash screen, then shutdown. Off to the computer store after that.

I am willing to BET that it was just the hard drive and that these guys don't know how to reformat. the 12" PB is known for failing hard drives for two reasons -- heat and the OEM Toshiba hard drives usually used in the 12" notoriously don't have their breather holes punched open through the Toshiba label. I, too, just had a hard drive failure on a 12" PB and it seemed like it might be the logic board at one point but it was just the hard drive. Don't announce you are coming in for the PB, that is grand larceny that they are charging. I bet its just the failing hard drive, a 60USD part.

 

[emotion]

I have two 12 powerbooks too. Very nice machines. Having said that I'd go with a Macbook now.

It is possible that a fried motherboard/logic board could just be something like a small battery gone (my mate had this on his Vaio, quoted £700 for repair got a mate to do it for 5 quid).

Worth having a poke around yourself first maybe?

 

[dunnstable]

I am willing to BET that it was just the hard drive and that these guys don't know how to reformat. the 12" PB is known for failing hard drives for two reasons -- heat and the OEM Toshiba hard drives usually used in the 12" notoriously don't have their breather holes punched open through the Toshiba label. I, too, just had a hard drive failure on a 12" PB and it seemed like it might be the logic board at one point but it was just the hard drive. Don't announce you are coming in for the PB, that is grand larceny that they are charging. I bet its just the failing hard drive, a 60USD part.

If that was the case though, wouldn't the computer have started up just fine from the Tiger disk? They've only charged me a diagnostic fee, which is high but reasonable, and then they said they'd back up the HD for no additional charge, which seems pretty generous to me. Is there anyway I could check to see if it's the HD and not the logic board?

 

[California]

If that was the case though, wouldn't the computer have started up just fine from the Tiger disk? They've only charged me a diagnostic fee, which is high but reasonable, and then they said they'd back up the HD for no additional charge, which seems pretty generous to me. Is there anyway I could check to see if it's the HD and not the logic board?

I am curious about how the speakers got "blown" and what specifically "fried" on the logic board. I could be all wrong about this only being the hard drive but I would try to start off external fw drive or hold down C button upon TIger disc start up before I gave up the logic board.

 

[emotion]

The 5400 60GB Toshiba drive in my 1.33GHz powerbook went. I got it in to repai before it gave up the ghost though and even if the drive had failed it would have booted of the Macosx dvd.

Apple preplaced it with a Hitachi part.

 

[California]

The 5400 60GB Toshiba drive in my 1.33GHz powerbook went. I got it in to repai before it gave up the ghost though and even if the drive had failed it would have booted of the Macosx dvd.

Apple preplaced it with a Hitachi part.

Yeah, the Toshibas fail because their breather holes don't get punched open upon being placed in the laptops. Their oem 5400 drives for Apple are actually better than the Hitachi 5400 drives in performance because they have a 16mb cache, only 8mb for Hitachis. But then again, the Hitachis don't fail because their labels are afixed properly...

 

[Macmaniac]

Scrap it for parts, once a repair is more then half the cost of a new machine its not worth it. You can easily sell it for parts, if the screen is still good I am sure someone will be willing to buy it. A screen can easily fetch $200 used, if not more.

 

[dunnstable]

Scrap it for parts, once a repair is more then half the cost of a new machine its not worth it. You can easily sell it for parts, if the screen is still good I am sure someone will be willing to buy it. A screen can easily fetch $200 used, if not more.

I think that's what I'm going to do. That point above, about never knowing if it's going to fail again is true. You'd always wonder, how long have I got?

About the speakers, hey, I just talked with the sales guy on the phone, who was passing on the tech's report to me. He was more interested in selling me a new Macbook, which is understandable. I'm sure the actual report will be a bit more specific about what was "fried". The speakers hadn't been putting out full volume for a while though, so I'm not doubting their diagnosis.

As for the hold down "c" on startup, been there, done that, no good. I'll see if single user mode will work when I get it back, but I've got no reason to think it will or that the shop is trying to hose me. They seem professional, and if they say the board's fried, I'm inclined to agree with them. The thing did have a pretty drawn out thrashing and death throes, so it's not like I took it in for a stuck cd and they said, "sorry mate, this computer's done." It was one sick puppy for a good week and a half. And it kept going downhill that whole time. Plus for the past six months it's seemed to be running noticeably slower than my sig. other's 12" iBook g4 800mhz. It never felt quite right.

Cheers

Dunny