bioneural.net

Over the past 16 years I've had the pleasure of being responsible for eight well-used Macs and associated hardware. In that time I've seen the failure of one display, one hard drive (thankfully post-TM), one power supply, and now one logic board. So what are your choices when a piece of kit fails? For most people the options considered will be either fixing it (until they get a quote), or replacing it. But there may be at least two more choices worthy of consideration: sharing a Mac, or rethinking what you actually need from a computer and recycling pre-loved equipment. Older equipment can be like older people: once you get past a certain point it's evidence of good genes! I'd bet my PowerBook 100 of 1992 vintage would still boot if it had any juice in the battery. Here's how we looked to the past to save money, and in so doing saved an ancient (i.e. any computer over 3 years old) iMac from premature retirement.

The symptom

I returned from breakfast to find my Mac mini "frozen" while displaying the screen saver. I repeatedly held down the power button until it restarted, but it would show the Apple logo and go no further (not showing the spinner below the logo as usual during the startup sequence).

Findings on examination

I tried everything I could think of to identify the problem:

• PRAM reset (Command-Option-P-R held down at startup, as here);
• SMC reset (as here);
• Booting from the mini in Safe Mode (Shift held down at startup);
• Booting from the mini in Verbose Mode (Command-V held down at startup) showed a few lines of text then froze, as here;
• Booting the mini from the Leopard DVD (C held down at startup) got no further than the grey logo;
• Booting the mini from a bootable SuperDuper! clone on a Firewire drive (Command-Option-Shift-Delete held down at startup) got no further than the grey logo;
• Booting the mini from the Apple Hardware Test DVD (D held down at startup) allowed me to run the diagnostic, which reported "no problems";
• Booting from a MacBook with the mini in Target Disk Mode (T held down at mini startup, as here) allowed me to clone the mini's internal Mac partition, and run Disk Utility which found nothing to repair;
• The mini works fine as a startup disk connected to a MacBook via Firewire cable;
• Leaving it unplugged overnight and coming back to it next day proved too hopeful.

Diagnosis

Everything seems to point towards a logic board failure.

A formal diagnosis from my local Apple Service Centre ("Yes, it's the logic board") would have cost £50. Because the technician's time must be accounted for, this charge would stand in addition to parts and subsequent labour, or the cost of a replacement Mac.

I settled for a telephone opinion ("Yes, it's probably the logic board").

Treatment options

There were essentially four choices:

1. We share the MacBook (we knew that wouldn't work, having tried it briefly and concluded a brief trial was the best kind!);
2. We get the mini repaired;
3. We replace the mini;
4. We rethink what it is we each need the computer to do, reuse what we can from the broken Mac, and rummage around in the attic for pre-loved hardware to recycle.

Repair was not economical

I obtained a parts and labour quotation from my local Apple Service Centre (rounded):

Item	Cost (£)
Mac mini 1.66GHz Intel Core Duo logic board	316
Labour	50
VAT	64
Total	430

ROFL.

Replacement was not logical

The cheapest way for me to replace the mini would be to buy another SuperDrive mini, from the Apple Store for Education (since I am enrolled for university):

Item	Cost (£)
Mac mini 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo	400
VAT	70
Total	470

Comparing this to the repair cost has an interesting implication: either the logic board per se is vastly overpriced, or the rest of what goes into a mini must be so cheap it can only have been salvaged from a skip.

Then there's the memory. My comatose mini had 2 x 1GB RAM modules; they happen to be of the same type (DDR2 PC2-5300) as taken by the current mini, which ships with 2 x 512MB modules. Because the mini is not serviceable by end users I'd need to spend another £66 at the Apple Store for Education to bring the new mini up to 2GB without voiding the warranty (i.e £536 total).

Alternatively, my local Apple Service Centre could take RAM out of the dead mini for £28, and insert it into the new one for another £28. If I bought the mini from them at retail price they'd charge once for the memory swap (total cost £526).

So we were looking at over £500 to replace like with like, making no significant upgrades. When I spend money on tech I prefer to buy hardware that gives me power or functionality I didn't have before, choosing when to take the plunge.

Recycling was cost-effective

The final option—that of recycling—gives us a "make do" alternative and postpones a spend until such time as Apple release something new and irresistible.

By repurposing old hardware, devoting 8 hours to the task, and coughing up just £17 on an adapter cable, my wife and I each have workable systems again. During the disruption our desks looked something like that scene from the Apollo 13 movie, where they pile bits and pieces onto the table to make a working CO2 scrubber out of materials to hand.

Stealing the cat's computer

Our attic room contained a 700MHz G4 iMac (the "dome" design). It was Simone's computer before we bought the more portable MacBook to take to New Zealand, and had been resurrected as a DVD player, or tasked to support occasional web surfing by the cat who claims that room as hers.

There were a couple of issues in migrating (OK then, downgrading) Simone to the iMac. Firstly, Leopard requires at least a 867MHz G4 and will not directly install from the installation DVD. Secondly, Simone was using way more storage than the 40GB internal drive could accommodate (even without Leopard installed).

It is possible to run Leopard on some unsupported Mac including our iMac, and there is even open source software to permit installation direct from the Leopard DVD. However, I overcame both problems with the one solution as follows:

1. Cloned the MacBook (users + system software) using SuperDuper! onto a 160GB 7200rpm external drive;
2. Connected the external drive to the iMac via Firewire (it otherwise has only USB 1.0);
3. Retaining Tiger (OS X 10.4) and Mac OS 9.2.2 installations on the iMac's internal drive, set the external drive as the startup disk.

Simone boots the iMac like normal, and the external drive automatically powers up and loads her desktop exactly as it was on the MacBook. This avoided the need to reinstall OS or applications, or having to labouriously migrate preferences, mailboxes, etc.

Time Machine wasn't practical without USB 2.0, so the 80GB USB drive she was using is now replaced by a 60GB iPod photo which is connected to the iMac's second Firewire port via a Firewire-iPod connector adapter that came with the car kit I bought for my first generation 5GB Firewire-based iPod.

Brain surgery and better vision

As the more demanding user, I was to appropriate the MacBook. The MacBook had only 1GB RAM (2 x 512MB modules), less than ideal for Photoshop, Parallels, or multi-application workflows. But not only were the 1GB modules in my old mini the same as those in the new mini; they were also the same spec as used in the MacBook.

Following these instructions I cracked open the mini and transplanted the RAM into the MacBook, doubling the installed RAM on that machine.

Extracting the mini's RAM for use in the MacBook

My only other issue with the MacBook was the screen resolution: 1280 x 800 is rather cramped after the 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution of an Apple Cinema Display. But my local reseller had Apple's mini-DVI to DVI display adapter in stock, meaning overall I gained 17MHz in processor speed in return for a £17 cable.

Spaghetti à la MacBook

The old mini is connected to the MacBook via a Firewire cable. I can boot into OS X from the Mac mini, but cannot load Boot Camp to run Windows this way (anyone know why not?). However, since my Windows partition is likewise available via the Firewire connection, I can still access it from within OS X via Parallels Desktop. In addition to Windows access the brain-dead mini will still serve as a region-free DVD Player, and when I reformat the OS X partition this will be used for regular Time Machine backups (enabling me to keep archives and a bootable clone of the MacBook on a portable 500GB USB 2.0 drive).

Using the brain-dead mini as a boot drive

Update 17.08.08: It wasn't a logic board failure after all. Something made me have another go, and for reasons unknown I was able to boot into the Tiger install DVD and install it, followed by Leopard, before the problem recurred. Not before I noticed, however, that the built-in AirPort card wasn't being recognized in System Profiler. Removing it allowed the Mac to boot; reinstalling it resulted in a start-up freeze or kernel panic. Removing it once more has resulted in normal operations since.