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My personal technique for SMD: firmly grab the capsule with needle nose pliers, push hard downward and then - at a the same time - twist the capsule by 90 deg or more. The connectors will break by shear and the capsule will come off. You will then remove the plastic base and easily desolder the...

So, after replacing the entire mother board, I started testing it with some vintage sw. I still have a Medal of Honor DVD I bought back at the time and which I remember having played it thoroughly on my 667 DVI TiBook. So, I was confident I could run it more than decently on a faster G4. In...

Anyhow, getting close to regretting having bought this machine… So far: - replaced the PRAM - replaced the internal drive (absent) with SSD - replaced the motherboard, due to the faulty video card - replaced the optical drive (prone to failure and it failed) Next will be refurbishing the main...

I don’t have the equipment nor the skills for attempting the replacement of the vram chip on my own, but if I find a lab that could do that for me I would like to give it a try and replace the ”toasted” chip. All the clues are leading to it.

Eventually, I replaced the motherboard with an 867 Hz / Radeon 32. In fact, in the original board with 64 Mb of VRAM, there's one memory chip which is just very partially in contact with the heat dissipator. It also looks a bit "toasted", with the lettering somehow darkened when compared to the...

Anyhow, still behaving totally erratically. The main battery is dead, but there's no way I can power it up using only the external power supply (65W). After starting up, the machine goes on sleep continuously, as if it was operating on a dead battery. Already tried to reset PRAM and PWM, to no...

Yes they are cheaper and I saw that, but the ad reads they won't be shipped to Japan.

First off, the PRAM battery had to be replaced, as totally dead. Power management behaving totally erratically. Curiously, the optical unit was also affected. Original item: Panasonic CGL3032, Li ion 3.7V rechargeable battery. Impossible to source an exact spare, seems like it has never been...

Just in case, here are 3 screenshots (made with Grab) showing how the issues goes with the color depth. When the issue is present (almost for any resolution / color depth combination, except the poorest ones), the issue is dynamic, in the sense that it is always different and it changes pattern...

Sure, assuming it’s indeed just one or more failed vram chip is a bit like shooting in dark, I agree. I will try to take some pics of the issue, maybe they can reveal a little more.

I see the point. Can’t really tell, my speculation was just based on the fact that the baseline version of the video card had only 32 Mb. So, I assumed the optional 32 Mb would be used to pilot a bigger external display, but could be whatever, it’s clear vram is not just about resolution...

The hardware test is returning the message “vram faulty”, with an additional code reading “disp/13/2”. To me it makes sense, as the issue is visible at full color resolution and disappears as you go down to 32k colors in OS9 (OS X doesn’t support 32k colors, you have to go down to 256). There...

I recently scored a wonderful PB Ti 1 GHz, top specs (1 GHz, Radeon 64), complete with everything, down to the plastic wraps. I am glad I could reacquaint with this ultra-cool machine, as it reminds me of when I was (well… twenty years) younger and I used to own a wonderful 667 DVI unit which I...

A few years ago I had exactly the same experience. Got a spare screen in perfect conditions, after a few hours of use it started developing dead lines. Out of 3 screens I had, two are now dead, only one is still OK, bar for a few dead pixels...

This company seems to offer free samples https://www.fujipoly.com/usa/resources/design-guidelines/design-guidelines-connectors.html

Thanks. I also considered something more refined, but eventually I concluded it was not worth the effort. This solution may not look so elegant, but it’s effective. The Al sheet can be easily trimmed with basic tools, so indeed it just took me one hour of work, plus the setting time for the epoxy.

I managed to fix this piece by reinforcing it with Alu sheet (0.2 mm) and epoxy resin for keeping everything together. The metal sheet is now bearing all the mechanical stress, the originals plastic pieces fulfil the function. Couldn’t find a better picture, sorry.

Sad, short story. The loading mechanism is not OK, because there’s a broken piece. Fatigue. Such a lousy design I could hardly believe. It’s completely nonsensical, but as the part is almost flat, I will see if it’s possible to make a better one out of some soft metal.

I just gave it a quick look, the issue lays in the mechanics of the eject mechanism. As you can see from the picture, there’s a rotating cam, which acts on a pin, translating rotational movement into linear one. Apparently, nothing looks damaged, just kind of snapped out of position (even though...

Thanks for the tip! I will try and see what I can do…