[iBook] Waiting for Leopard, formerly Brrrrrr

[Larry Kollar]

>From about 3 weeks ago:

>> My G3/900 iBook crapped out yesterday, with all the symptoms of a  
>> chomped logic board.
> 
> Is this the graphics chip issue?  If so, it's not a bad fix.   
> Apparently heat causes the solder to loosen up.
> 
> The easy fix is to put a shim inside the case ...
> 
> The other way is to reflow the solder with a heatgun, a soldering  
> iron on a spoon, or alcohol in a tea candle thingy.  Here's some  
> links including that strange last one:
> 
> http://preview.tinyurl.com/377hb3
> 
> http://preview.tinyurl.com/y6xz2p

I did the reflow and it worked! Actually, I cheated -- there's a reflow tech at 
work and she did it for me. Now I have to do this (or have it done) for my 
daughter's iBook... and get a new keyboard for it.

The only thing that didn't go according to plan was removing the thermal pad 
-- it crumbled to pieces on me. I found a large flat washer (substitute 
heatsink) in a parts box, slathered it up with thermal paste (both sides), and 
put that on the graphics chips. The only thing holding it in place at the 
moment is the thermal paste; I'll probably go back in this weekend & rivet it 
to the shield so I can carry it around again.

Those iFixit screw templates are pretty handy... I only have one leftover 
screw, and that's because a tab on the shield broke off where the screw went 
through, so I figured there was no sense putting it back in. :-) Their take-
apart instructions are mostly OK, the most glaring error was that you need a 
#0 Phillips screwdriver (or maybe a #00) as well as a #1.

Sure was nice to get my iPod resync'ed after three weeks, too!

-- Larry