Just resurrected a dead 5300CS!

[switch998]

Last week, I bought a powerbook 5300cs that wouldn't power up, according to the owner, for $5 locally. Figured it just needed a new power jack. Turns out pressing the reset button would sometimes yield a green light only, a chime and then freezing, or just some noise from the speakers. I took the laptop apart and found no obvious signs of any damage, but when I looked closely at the processor, I noticed that one side of the processor's pins broke free from the logic board!

Anyway, I resoldered (by hand ) all of the 603e's pins, and got the machine up and running again. Since I figure the heat from the processor caused the solder to crack in the first place, I applied a little bit of thermal paste to the chip.

Hopefully this helps anyone that has a powerbook with similar issues

[Bunsen]

Hahaha I just reached for the "Like" button. Gotta spend less time on Faceborg.

Well done Have you ever done any soldering at that pitch before?

[J English Smith]

Baby that hard drive...one of mine just gave up the ghost, and it was quite a chore refitting the drive sled to take a 12.5" factor drive from a 1400. The originals for the 5300 were these weird 17mm drives with holes in different places.

Congrats on the successful resoldering!

[switch998]

Hahaha I just reached for the "Like" button. Gotta spend less time on Faceborg.

Well done Have you ever done any soldering at that pitch before?

As a matter of fact, yes I've done micro-BGA stuff by hand (Well, the stencil part) in the past too. Just an FYI, you can make a decent buck on eBay through repairing macs.

Either way it was pretty damn frustrating, and it was a decent amount of work, but I would have hated tossing the powerbook.

[techknight]

Should have just gotten the reflow nozzle on your BGA station and did it that way. Thats what I do.

[switch998]

I was too afraid to burn the chip, and I wanted to put new solder on the pins, so the reflow station I have was not going to work (theres on way in hell I'll ever lay solder paste correctly).