Several disassembly steps later I had the power supply board out of the iMac.\u00a0 From a quick visual inspection, I could see that some of the\u00a0 2200 \u00b5F capacitors were leaking a bit and one had developed a considerable bulge at the base.\u00a0 Maybe we could do a cheap repair here?<\/p>\n
I clipped the four suspicious caps out (to get an accurate measurement) and checked them with my Fluke 179 multimeter–<\/a>quick side story:\u00a0 this DMM is so rugged that it survived a total loss house fire with only minor cosmetic damage.\u00a0 All the capacitors were out of spec but interestingly the one that looked the worst actually measured closest to good.<\/p>\n Easy peasy fix, right?\u00a0 LOL, not exactly.\u00a0 This board uses lead free solder, which is a total pain to remove.\u00a0 Even with my trusty Hako soldering iron<\/a> cranked up to 800\u00ba, the PCB’s heavy copper traces made it a challenge to keep the solder molten long enough to suck it up with a desoldering tool.\u00a0 An hour of determined effort and cussing later I had the old caps out and the through holes cleaned out.\u00a0 (I needed to ream most of the holes to get the last bits of lead free solder out).\u00a0 Four new shiny black capacitors installed without any drama.<\/p>\n I reinstalled the power supply module and the iMac started normally with 4 LEDs lit on the logic board.\u00a0 I also installed a new button battery while the iMac was open.\u00a0 Total cost of repair: under $2 \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n If I were to attempt a similar repair again I wouldn’t bother with trying to remove any components from the circuit board because of the lead free solder.\u00a0 The job wouldn’t look as pretty, but it would be a lot easier to just leave the old leads in place and solder new parts onto them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A 24″ iMac that wouldn’t start up came in for repair.\u00a0\u00a0 Pressing the power button got the fan to briefly run then shut off.\u00a0 It never reached the point where there was a happy (or sad) chime.\u00a0 The owner’s first inclination was to toss the computer after we wiped the hard disk but I told […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":225,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[19,47,49],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/jimandnoreen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/IMG_0914.jpg?fit=3648%2C2736&ssl=1","jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8sNNV-3J","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":59,"url":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/?p=59","url_meta":{"origin":231,"position":0},"title":"A month of many Macs","date":"July 26, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The 500 GB hard disk in my friend's circa 2008 24\" iMac started making ominous clicking noises last week. \u00a0Anticipating its near future death, we took a full backup and ordered a bigger 1 TB drive from Amazon. Apple never ceases to amaze me with the variety of ways they\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jimandnoreen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/20130726-081956-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":304,"url":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/?p=304","url_meta":{"origin":231,"position":1},"title":"13\" Retina MacBook Pro Retina won't boot, fan running full blast","date":"March 8, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"So this repair is mildly interesting. \u00a0The user's late 2012 MacBook Pro just wouldn't start up one morning. \u00a0It would get as far as a \"missing boot disk\" icon and shortly thereafter the fans started running full blast. Apple Diagnostics recognized that an SSD was installed but was unable to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12,"url":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/?p=12","url_meta":{"origin":231,"position":2},"title":"Reviving a drowned laptop","date":"July 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"My friend spilled a glass of water into her 13\" MacBook Pro.\u00a0 She had tried (unsuccessfully) to dry it out by sticking it in a bag of rice, followed up by a blast from a blow dryer.\u00a0 The laptop would not turn on at all.\u00a0 The battery was installed but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i2.wp.com\/jimandnoreen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/07\/macpro-logicboard-300x225.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":307,"url":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/?p=307","url_meta":{"origin":231,"position":3},"title":"Resurrecting a 17\" MacBook Pro with a heat gun","date":"March 15, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"So the dreaded day came when my beloved \"late 2011\" 17 inch MacBook Pro died.\u00a0 The screen wigged out while it was in use, then it would only boot halfway before stopping at a gray screen.\u00a0 From experience, I knew that it was suffering from the dreaded AMD GPU logic\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":356,"url":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/?p=356","url_meta":{"origin":231,"position":4},"title":"Long Distance Mailbox Alert using LoRa","date":"October 28, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"You've got mail! An IoT project using solar power and long range radio In these pandemic times of limited mobility, I become more like a dog every day: looking forward with great enthusiasm to meals, walks and car rides. One of the daily events that's taken on new importance is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Arduino"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/jimandnoreen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/img_5468-scaled.jpg?fit=1200%2C821&ssl=1&resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":347,"url":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/?p=347","url_meta":{"origin":231,"position":5},"title":"Why Backups Matter (even when they don't matter)","date":"May 30, 2020","format":false,"excerpt":"Apple continues its multi-year assault on my beloved \"late 2011\" 17 inch MacBook Pro. First by shipping it with a famously defective logic board, which I learned to repair by periodically baking and now by stymying my efforts to to restore backups to it. When the 17-incher's hard disk started\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Apple"","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=231"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":240,"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231\/revisions\/240"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/225"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jimandnoreen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Shiny](\"https:\/\/i1.wp.com\/jimandnoreen.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/IMG_0915.jpg?resize=281%2C211&ssl=1\")
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