Something fell out of my iMac.

[Xandros]

This actually happened years ago. Actually, it was probably nearly ten years ago, but it's one of those things that I occasionally remember and then promptly forget to enquire about, however this time I actually put my mind to asking the question when I was reminded of it, better late than never I guess.

Essentially, I have an iMac DV 400 (the 2001 Indigo model that was also available in Ruby with a Slot Loading CD-ROM). One day many moons ago, I moved it for some reason or another, and this yellow chip fell out of it. I had no idea what it was, what it did, where it came from, nor did I really care as the iMac still worked fine (and it still does to this day, to a point).

Today, I had the RAM access bay open as I was inspecting the module and I noticed this (note the vague red circled area):



The thing that fell out of the iMac looked just like those and since there's a missing one in between I'm fairly sure that's where it came from. So what is it? Does anyone know? Like I say the iMac works fine and dandy to a point - the CD-ROM drive is kaput though (runs, just won't read discs and eventually spits them out) and the monitor is getting a bit long in the tooth, but other than that I've never encountered any issues with it so whatever the chip is, it can't be that important.

 

[harrymatic]

It's a capacitor - probably what's known as a bypass or decoupling cap. It smooths out voltage transients, presumably for the large ICs near it on the board. I wouldn't worry about it, the other problems you describe would be completely unrelated.

 

[Xandros]

OK thanks for that, I did wonder.

 

[128keaton]

This actually happened years ago. Actually, it was probably nearly ten years ago, but it's one of those things that I occasionally remember and then promptly forget to enquire about, however this time I actually put my mind to asking the question when I was reminded of it, better late than never I guess.

Essentially, I have an iMac DV 400 (the 2001 Indigo model that was also available in Ruby with a Slot Loading CD-ROM). One day many moons ago, I moved it for some reason or another, and this yellow chip fell out of it. I had no idea what it was, what it did, where it came from, nor did I really care as the iMac still worked fine (and it still does to this day, to a point).

Today, I had the RAM access bay open as I was inspecting the module and I noticed this (note the vague red circled area):

View attachment 580869

The thing that fell out of the iMac looked just like those and since there's a missing one in between I'm fairly sure that's where it came from. So what is it? Does anyone know? Like I say the iMac works fine and dandy to a point - the CD-ROM drive is kaput though (runs, just won't read discs and eventually spits them out) and the monitor is getting a bit long in the tooth, but other than that I've never encountered any issues with it so whatever the chip is, it can't be that important.

Side note: thats a clean logic board

 

[Possumgal]

Have you tried a cleaning disc for the CD reader? If the laser gets dusty it will spit out everything.

 

[Xandros]

Side note: thats a clean logic board

Funnily enough I thought that too when I opened up the cover. It was always in a very dusty room too. I can only imagine it's stayed so clean due to either the fact that is technically the underside of the board (the top side might be a different story), or it's because the iMac is convection cooled and doesn't have a fan sucking in lots of lovely dust.

Have you tried a cleaning disc for the CD reader? If the laser gets dusty it will spit out everything.

I haven't, no. I suppose I could try it but I have a external Firewire DVD Rewriter that works fine and dandy so if I ever needed to mount a CD I just used that, though since the iMac's been relegated to just an email machine now I haven't actually needed to put a disc in it for nearly five years.