MOTUnation.com

Super Drive goes out in my 1,1.
I remove it.
It's wasted.
Stuck open about a 1/4".
I order one from eBay.
Lost by USPS but finally delivered.
Seller very helpful.
It's difficult to install.
It keeps getting hung up.
Finally the sled snaps into place.
While Mac is booting I realize something...
I installed the old drive.
Profanity.
I install the new drive.
Doesn't feel quite right.
I ignore it.
Start up Mac.
It sounds like a hovercraft.
A very loud hovercraft.
Mac refuses to boot.
Unplug.
Open it up.
New drive will not come out.
It's stuck.
Profanity.
Finally get it out.
Ribbon cable in front of fan and under sled.
That's bad.
Reposition cables on top of drive
Put access panel back on.
Pinch the heck out of my hand.
Profanity.
Mac boots up.
Drive works perfect.
Thank you, Lord.
Sorry for profanity.

Dan the Handyman.

Was there an extra screw or other piece of hardware when you were done? That's what often happens to me. No additional profanity due to the process as my dialect is sufficiently laced "as is."

Still, in many instances I do my own hardware repairs since much of my equipment has been discontinued and/unsupported.

Rebuilt mice, printers, drives, pianos (electric and acoustic). All unfair game.

I'll try your procedures in the future.

HCMarkus wrote:Dan the Handyman.

You got me.

It could have been much worse. Much, much, much worse.

Trust me on this one.

Glad it worked in the end.

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Was there an extra screw or other piece of hardware when you were done? That's what often happens to me. No additional profanity due to the process as my dialect is sufficiently laced "as is."

No extra parts because it came pre-mounted on a sled, but I still screwed it up.

MIDI Life Crisis wrote:Still, in many instances I do my own hardware repairs since much of my equipment has been discontinued and/unsupported.

Rebuilt mice, printers, drives, pianos (electric and acoustic). All unfair game.

I'll try your procedures in the future.

I give you credit for doing all that, Micheal. If it's any more difficult than this, I usually won't even try it. Installing RAM is difficult for me, and causes me much anxiety. I added RAM to my partner's iMac and the first thing I did was pull off those little tabs.

mikehalloran wrote:It could have been much worse. Much, much, much worse.

Trust me on this one.

Glad it worked in the end.

You're absolutely right, and thanks.

This thread reminded me of a rather unique hardware problem I had
with my old G5. It was about three years old when the Super Drive in
it just stopped spinning. The door would open and the tray would slide
out, but CD's and DVD's just wouldn't spin up. I took it to a local
authorized Mac repair place.

I got a call from them the next day saying they had replaced the drive.
The cause of the trouble? A brown spider had laid eggs inside the
drive, and they had hatched - and clogged up the drive, there were so
many of them. When the technician opened it up, they all came crawling out.

Definitely the most unusual cause of hardware failure I've ever had.

IMO, having other people do the work is just about as problematic, and you lose money. Then again, I spent a lot of time in my youth building computers, so I'm pretty handy with that sort of thing.

Prime Mover wrote:IMO, having other people do the work is just about as problematic, and you lose money. Then again, I spent a lot of time in my youth building computers, so I'm pretty handy with that sort of thing.

Amen! I do ALL my hardware repairs, until it reaches a point where it's simply beyond me. At that point, nobody else can fix it, either, without a motherboard replacement or just plain replacing the hardware, so that's when I either take it to Apple or buy another.

Very few of my external drive enclosures have their original drives in them. I find that the electronics rarely fail, but drives do. And I figured out how to add an extra SATA drive to the early Mac Pro's, by utilizing an unused plug on the motherboard. Quite a job wrenching the cable onto that plug, but it worked, and there was space for the drive in the extra optical drive slot. I even found an adapter to screw it down tight in the optical drive slot. I was amused and grateful to find that Apple gave us that extra SATA connector up there in the optical drive area in the more recent Mac Pro's, so we don't have to wrench those cables onto that motherboard anymore.

New fans in my MOTU interfaces? No problem. Just unscrew about 85 screws, and you're there. (no kidding) Fry's sells fans of the right voltage, it was an easy fix, though I do remember there was a little adapting to do to make it fit. But it's worked perfectly for a few years now.

These kinds of things would cost a fortune for someone else to do them. In fact, I don't know how I'd ever even find someone to do the repairs that I do. Could someone actually make a living these days doing those kinds of things? I don't know, but I enjoy taking things apart, fixing them, and putting them back together. Sometimes I manage to figure out how to make them better! So far, I've never actually lost a device from trying to fix it.

A few weeks ago, my wife set her old alarm clock on my desk and asked me to fix it. You can buy them for probably $5, but I decided what the heck? Give it a try. When I opened it up, parts flew everywhere, including the quartz-timed armature that you hear in there going "click.... click.... click...." every second. At first I was tempted to sweep it all into the garbage, but I decided to treat it like a puzzle. There were a finite number of parts, and a finite number of possible places to put them. After a few trials and errors, I managed to get it put back together, with the problem gears cleaned of worn material such that it once again kept time and... surprise... even sounded the alarm. (the alarm had not worked in at least ten years) It was an enjoyable project, and with nothing to lose (it was already broken), it was entirely for fun. I was more surprised than anyone when I managed to get the thing back together, but I did... twice! (the first time I forgot to position that armature correctly before closing it up)

As for the occasional profanity, I find that hardware responds to that much better than people!

Shoosh

I added a 2nd drive (Blu-Ray), a SSD drive and 3 HD's, RAM, a 2nd video card, plus some other cards to my computer. I have been a long time electronics hobbyist and went to collage for electronics engineering. I also took a number of repair classes, some of them in computers. I have a repair bench with an oscilloscope and test equipment where I fix different electronic gear and computers, mine and other peoples. I have designed and constructed gear for my studio, built a vacuum tube preamp, done modifications on amps and repairs, I have made a number of my own cables, just to name a few things. So working on my gear is fun to me, as sick as that may sound to some people.

I find it fun as well but nowhere near as elaborate a setup as twisted tom. Often I will have a piece if equipment that is clearly going to be replaced and trashed (printers, old laptops, peripherals, speakers) and my feeling is W-T-F? What can I hurt by taking it apart at this point? Sometimes with the help of online instructions and videos, sometimes without, I do a teardown and more often than not, find and fix the problem and avoid a replacement - at least for a while.

Other times something will start giving me problems that can't wait. A few years ago my Kurzweil PC88 fell about 8" and stopped working. OK, $3k for a new keyboard but maybe it's a loose connection or bad solder joint that came loose.

I opened the case and saw nothing that looked unusual. I simply pressed down each chip and the orchestral board, closed it up and it still works to this day. It was retired as a studio only controller and replaced with a PC2x but it still works! I can't remember how many printers I've rebuilt or tore down to clean heads or laser wires, etc. Success is generally about 85% for all devices. Beats the hell out of buying replacements every time due to planned obsolescence.

I've fixed some things by unplugging them for five years and then plugging them back in again.

That's my speed.

twistedtom wrote:I added a 2nd drive (Blu-Ray), a SSD drive and 3 HD's, RAM, a 2nd video card, plus some other cards to my computer. I have been a long time electronics hobbyist and went to collage for electronics engineering. I also took a number of repair classes, some of them in computers. I have a repair bench with an oscilloscope and test equipment where I fix different electronic gear and computers, mine and other peoples. I have designed and constructed gear for my studio, built a vacuum tube preamp, done modifications on amps and repairs, I have made a number of my own cables, just to name a few things. So working on my gear is fun to me, as sick as that may sound to some people.

Wow! Maybe I'll start bringing my stuff over to YOUR house!



Shoosh