Faulty Apple MacBook Pro A1278 - Charges But Doesn't Power On - Trying to FIX

[Music] hi there my name is vince from mymatevince.com and in this video today we're going to be trying to fix up this 2011 apple macbook pro so the problem with this one is it's not powering on when i press the button here it doesn't it's showing no signs of life whatsoever normally you can hear the noise from the disk drive straight away it's not doing anything yet when we look here you can see we've got an amber light and it is actually charging if i press this button here you can see it's flashing there and also it's keeping this charge as well so now i know a lot about this one here because this is actually my one this was the first one that i fixed on the channel whenever that was two or three months ago now and i couldn't actually fix it because a component had burnt and it worked its way through the board the burn had gone through the board it was either an internal short in the layers of the board or it had shorted out the cpu i bought a different board a spares or repair board hoping that i could take components between two of them and make one good board however when i put the spares a repair board in it just worked perfectly for the rest of that duration of that video then it started to play up it would only turn on maybe one in five or six goes which was kind of odd yet when it was on it would work perfectly so i got my camera out again and i started filming but i never released a video because i've got so much footage i never edited it down but basically i swapped out various different chips and then eventually i found a tiny little trace that had a previous repair on it and the wire was the tiniest thing i've ever seen you could barely even see it i used 0.1 millimeter it was much smaller than that and it must have been a bad connection because all i did was change that wire out with a 0.1 millimeter wire and since then it's worked perfectly every single time and this must have been on 50 or 60 times for different durations and it's been working fine this has been in use over the past couple of few months since that video then and that's why i was so surprised that it failed because the last time it was in use it was working perfectly and it was just put away like it always is i went away on holiday i came back and my brother was round i wanted to show him something i turned this on and it wouldn't turn on i thought that's weird i thought maybe the battery was flat there wasn't there was charge in the battery also when i plugged it in it still wouldn't turn on and that's where we are now so nothing was done to this it wasn't dropped kicked water damaged it was working perfectly and then it's just stopped so let's take it apart and let's revisit the previous repair that i did and see if we can work out if it's linked to that or not now i tried all the different things about trying to reset it you know when you have all these different button combinations that you do i can't remember what they are but when you hold down these ones and r and p and hold down different buttons at the same time and hold it on i've done everything that online suggests and it's still completely and utterly dead so let's get the back off it and see if we can fix it so this is lovely and easy to take apart because we just have cross head screws at the back here so let's undo them and then let's just pop out the battery pop out the ram make sure it's nothing like that and then i'll take the board out and i can show you the previous repair that was done to it now the ball is going to look a bit messy because there was a lot of components and stuff were taken off at different chips and stuff when i was trying to fault find it it's annoying because the the video would have been quite a nice one because the the fault you know when the fault was found it's just there's so much footage there it would take me days to edit up and the problem with it is i can't see how i'm going to get it down to even even an hour 20 minutes you know with all the things that was done to it and you see that's going to be it's getting to the length there where it's unwatchable i know some people would be able to watch that but not many people can watch uh feature length feature length fixes right okay let's uh let's undo the battery and let's plug it in again and see if it comes to life normally that fan should start spinning just by plugging it in no so green light there nothing there let's turn it on here nothing there right unplug that and let's pop the ram out eight gigabytes and again you can see that it's completely dead really strange uh okay that's uh that's that let's take this board out so there's numerous ribbon cables around the place and you need a torx seven i think it is no not seven talk six yeah so talk six to undo all the bits i'm just gonna fast forward through all that and while i'm doing that i'll give a shout out to the my mate vince massive so the members this month consists off kitschdigital.com kip hakes max rokatansky having fun repairs edinsburg amplifier repair and service will michaelis chris seal dorian from hoover lux restorations felipe mrkeebs.com dan pratten king kurd from low book auto sales and kiki hobby repair thank you guys right so this is the board here and i'm just going to zoom in i can still see it etched in my mind this area here let's zoom right in to show you oh here we go here here right so this is this is so small but the wire is quite visible now but that wire was absolutely tiny and that's the reason i didn't see it it was it was it looks like ten times smaller than that i think it was like naught point naught one or something ridiculously small but anyway let me put my meter to continuity to me that wire still looks intact so from memory it went from there to that via and that one to there now i wasn't sure if this sort of test point whatever went through the board so i soldered it onto there and onto here yeah and we've got uh we've got it there i can't remember whether there was anything there and i don't think there was because look there's other missing pads here as well so i don't think i think the lumps of solder was just from me struggling around this bit here because it was so small so it looks like my repair is still intact doesn't it i'm just gonna see if i can get a reading on that resistor just in case the heat somehow ruined it actually i can just go from here make it easier for myself yeah 19 000 ohms well 19.8 so that's going to be a 20 000 ohm resistor so that's definitely working let me just make sure the capacitor hasn't failed so go to continuity and i'm just going to take a ground from here this bit here and let's see if it's shortened on one side yeah so that hasn't failed right so i don't think that's the issue let's just do a quick visual inspection everywhere else now as i say this board is a mess because i had numerous chips off i think i was chasing faults around there you go you can see all the capacitors here are all discovered these were the the chips i was uh chasing the faults around but it turns out it wasn't anything to do with that i don't think i removed any other chips on here it's been so and did i do something over here yes i remember now i messed up the sound as well so i had to get this sound chip off another board so these ones here are to be sound because they go off to i presume one of these ones here i think anyway it was definitely that chip there i didn't have proper sound it was kind of quiet it wasn't coming out of all the speakers so yeah that's the that's the backstory of this here let me just see these capacitors don't look good today let me see if we've got if any of them have shorted no they haven't yeah from memory yeah they go down to here anyway this is short in here but these shorts against here i think was it from here yeah it is yes that's supposed to be ground there uh yeah okay no it's not that right how are we going to find this should we measure voltages around the place or should we just have a look at this old repair i mean the problem that was happening before is it wasn't turning on and that's what it's doing now and it was to do with this so let's have a closer look here because i don't know why this would have failed in the first place so that goes to here does it yet then it goes through the resistor to here does this come up anywhere to the capacitor capacitor goes down to where here where no that capacitor go to so small to see around here to that via there that look intact tell you what let's let's get the board view and then we can trace some uh continuity around this area here because why was this gone in the first place do you know what i mean right so here we have it the board view and i found something interesting already where i thought there wasn't a resistor on this area here that i repaired before there should be a resistor and there's not on my board so it could be as simple as that maybe the last time i put this down i might have been a bit heavy-handed and maybe the resistor popped off because i was messing around in that area possibly the resistor might have only been just hanging on by a tiny bit of flux or something rather than making a nice solder connection so anyway look this is the board view here so i have the board view here and i've got the schematic here and if i was to go to i'm using paul daniels software here and it's really good because what it allows me to do is it allows me to have both sides of the board on the one screen and then i can go directly to the schematic so beforehand i mean i've done very little of this work but beforehand i would have to go into the schematic and i would have to search for the component and blah blah blah blah blah but with this one here now i can just go into any component and then i can just click on it and go to pdf and it will bring me to the uh the schematic which is really good so check this out we know that we need to be working on this bit of the board here yeah so it's this top board here and i'm going to zoom right in zoom right in zoom right in i can move it around the place and we now have this bit here so this is where i ran the wire from here to here to here and that's where the wire was run originally if i click on this you can see that it goes from here to here yeah and this one here and then look see this line going up here if you're wondering where it goes to where you can start moving up moving up moving up moving up and it goes past this board onto the other board and this is why it's so useful it goes right down into underneath this chip here yeah so it's uh it's really really really good i mean i haven't you know i still don't know my way around schematics and stuff but even for me at my level this is incredibly helpful and then of course you can go on to the other side you can see that that's ground and you can see where this side of the resistor goes as well anyway look at this this is the resistor which is not on my board and if i click on this you can see that it goes off to loads of different directions there and loads of different directions there and if i was to click on this and then go to pdf up here pdf and click on that then it will bring me to well actually i've done that previously so i'm going to click on this one here and then go to pdf so it brings me to something different and then when i open my schematic you will now see that it's going to bring up everything where the c1802 capacitor is but look let's go back so we're not interested in that one at this moment let's go back to boardview we're interested in this one here i'm going to go to pdf and look it's here it's a 10k resistor it's packages 201 201 there we go so i'm going to get myself a 10k resistor i'm going to pop it in and see if it comes to life so what it means is somewhere in this machine that 10k resistor or on this board must be stuck somewhere but it's a 201 package it's tiny tiny tiny tiny i'm never going to be able to find that it could have even worked its way out through one of the vents off the apple just from moving it around the place so yeah how good is that right let me get one of those resistors and let's pop it in the board i've got 10k but the smallest i've got is 40402 which is actually quite a bit bigger because if you have a look at this little ruler here 0402 is that size there so in other words the capacitor or resistor will sit perfectly on those pads there and you'll be able to solder them look how much smaller o201 is look at it it's tiny that's the torx six bit compared to it right let's see if there's any way i can get this on hmm i might be able to get that one how big are the pads underneath yeah well i should be able to get that on shouldn't i so i add a little bit of the magic flux and then add some heat at 480 degrees celsius and i'm only going four out of eight with the airflow because i don't want to blow this all around the board because it's the tiny component not small as the one that was on there beforehand but it's still absolutely tiny now luckily for me as you can see on this little fast forward a bit it does actually sit into place quite nicely after but moving it around a little bit it does seem to put itself into that little home on the pads there so what i need to do now is just clean it up with some ipa and then we can test it see if it works well it actually looks quite nice on there let's just give it a little knock see if it's stuck i think it has so now does that one go to there really i need to look at the schematic and see where it goes to right i've had a look at the schematic and the australian board view and basically that side of the resistor just travels right the way across the boards in different directions nothing close by but it looks like this side goes too i think it was i think it was here one of these ones so if i go onto the top they're excellent so it goes to there so we definitely know that that's made contact i'm going to say that that's made contact as well weirdly looks like it's going to here but on the board oh no it's not it's coming of below that isn't it below that along this one here does it go to here i wonder no that passes by doesn't that goes to there yeah it's uh i was at the top one there here maybe am i going to be able to get on that no it's this one here i don't really want to go scraping back no i don't really want to go scraping back i'm just going to put the i'm just going to pop the fan in and see if it kicks in would be great if it was just that right let's see if it comes to life come on no that's annoying oh come on right okay that's not uh that's not doing it let's zoom in and have another look here just gonna make sure that that one there is still in contact with here just in case it's come off that pad yeah that's fine so if i go between here and here i should get an home reading like i did originally yeah 19.8 000 ohms right okay that looks a little bit exposed there doesn't it could that be shorting against something i wonder where that one goes to do you know what i'm going to do i'm going to pop this capacitor off and hopefully it will become more clear because there's definitely something underneath there in fact it's loose look at that i know it's so hard to see all right that's the max my camera will zoom in and that's why it's so blurry is that a broken track there there there there there something happened there something has happened here right let's get this capacitor off and it might become more clear what's going on let's try to zoom out see if it would look better yeah something's gone there unless that's not supposed to be here well let's not wiggle it anymore let's take that capacitor off and see what it uncovers that wire's loose there we go hmm can't see a pad there at all that capacitor wasn't shorting though now i'm going to take off the resistor above it might even do the resistor above that as well then hopefully we can see exactly what's happening i've placed them on my little blue map above each other so i know which goes where right let's clean this up now and see what's happening right well i can definitely see the trace is going around here looks like from the top of here around but where does it go to then so we might have to look at the schematics and see where this is supposed to go to but let's see if we can see through the camera to begin with well this is ground isn't it it's not going to be to there it must be that must be going to here all right let's have a little look so we think it's going round around to here is it not oh no it's going to a fire there i was so annoying when it does that because i have to scrape it back in order to get a uh reading yeah but look it's not going anywhere there right i am going to have a look at the boardview and see if i can see where that i think that's supposed to be connected to there because that that's not a ground is it that's not going to be a ground because otherwise it would just there's no point in the wire there it would just be on this you know just on this area here this is the capacitor here that was the resistor we just replaced this is the capacitor and if you have a look here we have got a via type thing here haven't we and if i click on it and go to pdf and go down to schematic so it's c1802 c1802 is here you can see one side if it goes to ground and the other side goes up and uh it goes up to there is a different resistor 1802 but in which case then we should be able to measure that show me where's 18 notes where's 1802 uh 1802 is this one of course we know sorry we know that because that's the that's the y that i've run okay so that one there so the other side now goes off to can you see here pch something i'm not sure what that what that means so let's re-run a little wire between the uh the wire and there and let's see if that now fixes the problem i bet you that's i bet you that's that's more important than the uh that resistor the other little resistor that we replaced right so i am going to scrape back this one here [Music] now i want to take it easy by that fire i don't want to scrape too much because if i damage the via then now if it's going for example below one of the big chips then i'm not going to be able to access it so that's why i've tried to scrape more on the actual kind of track part i know i did the wire but the edge of the wire um well i've got a bit on there now so i'm going to just burn the enamel off this wire this is 0.1 millimeters so i'm just going to burn the enamel off the the end of it and i'm going to try to tin it up i'm just going to rotate the ball to make it easier for myself and try to solder this bit on here just get a bit more flux so right that's on there and it's not on there but i've got to be careful now because the solder has gone down here where i was tinning it i don't want it to short against anything else so i'm gonna have to put the other components back on in fact you know what when i put the other components back on this is gonna just blow its way off isn't it i didn't really think that right let me uh i'm just going to cut off the excess off here but leave it plenty long there we go now let's put the components back on so what we're going to do here the resistors are going to be easy what i'll do is just put a tiny bit more solder on them just to make it even easier should already plenty of flux around the place right let's uh move that out the way there so i need to put that back on so walk with the flux because you can't really see what's going on but i think they're all separate from each other yeah they are it's just a shininess the light bouncing off it which makes it hard to see right let's get those components back on now with this here it's even too small to put tape around that area there let's just move it across here if i'm lucky i might not knock it off well we're just going to do one at a time we go there we go see surface tension pull that in i'm gonna leave that one there let's get the next one and now let's heat up that one they're resistors so it doesn't matter which way around they go annoying that's flips come on pull in go on go on go go go go ah lovely perfect right let's now do the capacitor now this isn't going to put him because the pat's missing on one side i think i'll leave it at that that's on there now right so that is on there do you know what i'm gonna do let me just see if i can tap it this side that was a bad move [Music] i think we have to bring out the hot air again come back come back come back come back i'm gonna bring out the hot air and a bit more flux ah no no no they've stuck together oh come on come on come on you know what i got away with that lightly there very lightly right so now i have to solder that wire back onto here back onto there and then i can worry about the other one there we go brilliant excellent right let's root this one somewhere where it's not against all the others and then we can put some solder mask on it see if i was to go across here that should be fine that's fine there don't want to touch either of them really we can we can sort of melt it all along here can't we because this is all in contact there let me try and scrape off and tin this bit here i think that will do well that's probably it but i'm going to put another little dollop on there we go brilliant so now that's not going to be shortened with that i hope and let's miss that there let's give it a little clean and we can test it we go let's see what we've got going on so we should now have continuity between here all the way to here which we have now and we're not short in between here and here no good but i definitely have to put solar mask on there because you can see how close it is right let's put the fan in let's see now if we're going to have a fan spin i really hope we do okay ready come on now come on come on come on yes yes yes yes brilliant fantastic oh yes right brilliant so what it was originally the problem was there so i think something's happened in the past with water damage or something and i ran that little wire there but then in the meantime that other part of the track failed oh that's so good fantastic so yeah in the meantime the other part of the track failed i mean maybe there's other stuff going on there that may fail in the coming weeks and months i'm not too sure i mean we could zoom in and make sure the rest looks okay but yeah look at that oh such a nice feeling i'd love to be good at fixing macbooks i'd love it like when you watch paul daniels and louis frosman it's just uh it's just like an art form especially just being able to read schematics like that see it's kind of weird because obviously reading schematics is a skill but on the most of the things that i fix there are no schematics in a way you wonder how much time you should spend learning them if they're not going to be available but hopefully with the right to repair and stuff but coming along nicely maybe it is going to be a very good skill to have because maybe in the future we will all have access to schematics not too sure right okay uh what do we need to do seldom i will zoom in first and then we can have a look at putting solar mask on i'm so happy with that again i know it's uh it's an old macbook but half of it for me well it's a macbook that works and it is in use but half of it for me is just the feeling of fixing things i can't describe it but everybody who does it will know exactly what i mean and obviously it's good for the environment and stuff but even if you just forget about anything to do with that the buzz you get from fixing something is good i highly recommend if you haven't attempted anything yet as long as you do it safely give it a go because then when you get something working again it feels brilliant so we've got a via here that looks relatively intact i mean this is where it failed and that trace was very close it was here wasn't it so if the pad under here failed then maybe this one was just barely hanging on i think we might be okay i think this macbook now might have had uh had its bad luck in life maybe from now on it will keep working yeah so i'm just going to be using some of this curing solder mask and then i'm going to be using the uv light to cover it all up i'm going to leave that now for about 10 or 15 minutes and then it should be nice and hard well it's been on there for a good uh it's probably about half an hour in total so it's gone nice and hard now so really well into the future that shouldn't come loose now should it right let's zoom out check one more time with the fan spinning and then we can put this back together there we go brilliant right okay and get this back together and hopefully i can show you it working at the very end all right so it's the next day now and it's working perfectly every time that i turn it on it works like it did for those weeks after the initial fix you can hear there and then it will come up and because it's got the ssd it boots pretty quick you can see the bar moving along there there we go and for the age off the laptop that is quite a quick boot so i'm just going to put in the password my mate vince is king there we go so what a nice i really enjoyed that fix i mean it was a lot easier for me because i previously spent a lot of time on this finding the original problem but it just shows that i didn't spot that that trace wasn't the best well i mean it's been working so obviously the trace must have just been hanging on and in the meantime it broke away so uh yeah i think now that that will be a lasting repair with all that solder mask on i can't see that going anywhere now with that uh wire in place it's all covered up so yeah really really enjoyed that one and i think a product's well worth fixing because it's just a nice product even though it's old so that is it for this video if you enjoyed it give it a thumbs up and please subscribe for more videos in the future thanks so much take care now [Music] [Music] you

Channel: My Mate VINCE

Views: 78,031

Keywords: Apple MacBook Pro A1278 doesn't Power On, Apple MacBook Pro 2011 faulty, trying to fix an Apple MacBook Pro, Faulty Motherboard on Apple MacBook Pro, Learning electronic repair, fault finding and repair, Apple MacBook Repair, fixing Apple laptops, tracking down faults on Apple Laptops, 820-2936B Apple repair

Id: pil2-Poc5oI

Length: 38min 38sec (2318 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 19 2021