Got a free Macbook, but it had water spilled in it...

[goMac]

I managed to get a second hand Macbook for free that was "killed" by a water spill. At first, it would respond to nothing, battery wouldn't charge, and the power cord wouldn't light up, and no chime.

I replaced the top case, and now the power is all working, and it will power up with a chime, but the screen never powers on, and the hard drive spins up, but the boot process never seems to start because the hard drive stays spinning but never clicks.

If the logic board is damaged, I might as well scrap it, but it's chiming... are there any other possibilities?

 

[Mushi-shi]

Did you try a external screen... might be the internal screen that is bad also..

 

[goMac]

I actually managed to get it booting... First I booted it with an external display, from a cd, and I was getting video out. Then if I held down the power button when I was starting it up, it chimed, and I get video on the internal display too now.

Everything is actually working, except for the internal HD. I swapped in a fresh HD, so it's not the HD itself. Disk Utility won't see the drive. ASP shows that it can find the SATA controller but not the drive on the other end. Ideas?

Edit: Another symptom is when the HD is plugged in it takes a very long time to get past the initial gray screen.

 

[California]

I actually managed to get it booting... First I booted it with an external display, from a cd, and I was getting video out. Then if I held down the power button when I was starting it up, it chimed, and I get video on the internal display too now.

Everything is actually working, except for the internal HD. I swapped in a fresh HD, so it's not the HD itself. Disk Utility won't see the drive. ASP shows that it can find the SATA controller but not the drive on the other end. Ideas?

Edit: Another symptom is when the HD is plugged in it takes a very long time to get past the initial gray screen.

Replace or reseat the ram.

 

[goMac]

Replace or reseat the ram.

No dice.

 

[iBookG4user]

You could try running teh Apple Hardware Test and see what teh results are.

 

[goMac]

You could try running teh Apple Hardware Test and see what teh results are.

Sadly, I don't have the hardware test cd.

The logic board looks good, I'm almost wondering if the HD cable doesn't have a corroded end... On the end where it connects to the logic board some of the contacts seem to have a dark covering, is this normal?

ASP being able to find the SATA controller is a good sign. I'm sure if it came down to it I could just boot it from an external drive and use it as a media center...