Tech Surgery Gone Wild (Part 1)
It was supposed to be a simple procedure. A friend of mine just bought an old iMac DV, one of the second generation models with the translucent indigo blue case and slot-loading CD drive, off eBay. It came stripped: no operating system, no software, nada. I was to be called in to help him set it up. I figured, what the hell, and acquired OS 9, and OS X 10.4 CDs, then went into Center City to help him buy a keyboard, mouse, USB hub, and other useful things.
We return to his dorm room, take the iMac out of its box, brush off the remaining styrofoam pellets, remove it from its plastic bag, and plug it in. As soon as it has power, the darn thing makes a sort of fuzzy, static noise, very faint. We’re not sure what’s causing it, but go full-speed ahead, and press the power button. The static noise gets louder, and it makes some other noises, but aside from that, nothing happens. I figure something’s wrong with the PMU, so take out my pen, jab it against the button on the side where the ports are, and wait.
No dice.
Eventually, with my pen still jammed against the PMU button, the power button lights up, flashes several times, and passes out. All the while, the machine is grunting away, trying vainly to start up. The monitor tries to come on, the speakers occasionally pop, the drives spin up and spin right back down. It can’t even get to the point where you hear the startup chime. So, I whip out my iBook G4, and decide to go searching Apple’s website and the rest of the web for solutions to our problem.
Of course, Temple University’s dorms lack wireless. Fine, we’d bought a network cable in the interim, and I plug that in. Still no luck, as I have to register the iBook with Temple to get internet access. My friend logs in to the Temple server, I run their configuration program, and get told that internet access will be up for my iBook in the hour. At this point, I seriously begin regretting my choice of college.
About a half-hour later, and more prodding the PMU and Reset buttons, I finally get online with the iBook. My searching had suggested that the problem may be the logic board battery, and so, we place the machine on the desk, screen down, and start to open it using my Swiss Army Knife. It is not an easy task, since a number of the screws are placed in little crevices where the blunt tip of my screwdriver/wirestripper/can opener blade can go. Eventually, we manage to break into the seedy underbelly of this iMac, and our quarry, a purple 3.6V lithium battery is easily removed.
We can’t be sure it’s dead, but thankfully my friend had a multimeter on hand. Sadly, the multimeter had no battery, and to put a battery in, we needed a screwdriver smaller than the bit on my knife. He runs out to RiteAid for an eyeglass repair kit[1], and I prod at the computer a bit more. When he returns, we check the battery, and the damn thing couldn’t be more dead if it were buried by the light of a full moon. It’s never good to see “-0.01″ on a multimeter.
Sadly, by this point, the nearby RadioShack[2] is closed. We admit surrender, for now, and close the computer back up. After class on Monday, we’re going to get a replacement battery, and see what happens. Wish us luck.
