My iBook went kaput

[unixguru]

Guess what? My iBook is one of the "small number", to quote Phil Schiller, that are affected by the logic board video issue. I had noticed an artifact on the screen at one point a couple of weeks ago but a reboot fixed it so I thought nothiing of it and didn't continue worrying about it. However, today it got really bad; the machine froze, got really bad scrambled video, and wouldn't boot back up. Later, though, I was able to get it to boot and run for an hour and a half, enough time to copy all my stuff to an external firewire hard drive. It then got scrambled video and the screen turned white. I'm going to take it in to an authorized repair center tomorrow for shipment to the apple repair center. Wish me luck!

[staph]

Well, my iBook G3 did something very similar. I wouldn't get too worried — it does sound like the mobo, but I shouldn't think there's a particularly large chance of major data loss, and Apple will almost certainly fix it for free.

Bon chance!

-S

[DMBand0026]

Good luck, glad you got everything backed up :)

[unixguru]

It's always good to backup data before sending your machine off. I've read a few horror stories about an Apple repair center (which as I understand is not run by Apple but contracted out to a third-party).

Does anyone know what exactly is failing? The guy I talked to at the repair center said it is a small supporting chip for the video subsystem, although he wasn't able to tell me exactly what its function is.

[alcimedes]

if it's what i think it is, there was a stretch a while back where at least half a dozen computer manufacterers got really cheap capacitors.

long story short, turns out they were cheap because the company that was producing them had stolen the formula. however, they didn't quite steal all of it. they somehow forgot to add an agent that stabilized them. so what happened over time was they slowly degrade, then pop.

next thing you know, you have a dead MB. it only seemed to affect the iBook line of Apple's products. guess i know where that extra grand went in my PowerBook.

best of luck on the repair.

[usurp]

mine died also same problem
www.unex-t.com/deadbook