I got a free TiBook today

[quantumii]

I just got this TiBook for free from a fellow colleague. Initially it was not working (Red light on the PSU connector) but after a PMU reset (Disconnect internal battery) it works fine. I also had to fix the shielding connector for the DVD-drive, as the machine locked up when using the DVD drive. I just upgraded it to 10.4, and it works fine.

Originally it was a 400 Mhz 128MB ram, but the RAM has been upgraded to 640 MB, and the HDD is a 60 GB one.

Cosmetically it is in great shape too. :beige:

 

[ChristTrekker]

Sweet!

 

[quantumii]

It seems like this poor TiBook suffers from random lockups. Also, it just got the habit of booting to a black screen. This smells like GPU issues. Resetting the PRAM sometimes brings it back, but my last attempt failed.

I guess I need to pull off the old heatgun, aluminum foil & ir-thermo fix, unless there are other things I should try first?

 

[quantumii]

An update on the TiBook:

I now have heatgunned the GPU twice, and the laptop still locks up if you twist it.

It is much better than before, but it still has problems.

Pressing down on the GPU helps, and makes it more stable... Maybe I need to fry it even harder, or maybe there are other intermittent connections somewhere.

I still believe it is the GPU BGA which has poor connections. Anyone here who has done a reflow of this particular machine before? :?:

 

[bizzle]

I wasn't aware Titanium PowerBooks had those GPU issues. That could explain why mine sometimes boots without video but if I fool around with it and move it around and flip it over a couple of times it sort of works for a bit. Shame it's a nightmare to take the logic board out of those.

 

[quantumii]

It is not too bad to remove the motherboard. I have had far more challenges with a HP PeeCee and some other laptop brands which I do not recall at the moment. I am able to pull it in a few minutes now.

At least in this model the GPU is a large black ceramic package, not a CPU style visible die type of package (Like the newer nVidia chips), so maybe that is why the heatgun method does not work that good because the ceramic absorbs much of the heat?

 

[didius]

I've got a TiBook (DVI) 867Mhz.

I also has freezing issues, ressetting the PMU sometimes helps, sometimes it doesn't. I never had any issues with it and i guess its a motherboard failure. Replacing the motherboard seems pretty easy, I have opened it several times and the machine is pretty open for changes. However, those motherboards seem rare and expensive to find.

I'd love to get mine running again, i love the feel of that titanium

Did you find any solutions yet?

 

[Nathan]

Might need to be warmer, read of at least one person using a tea candle holder with burning alcohol to heat the solder on an ibook with a loose gpu problem.. You might try more heat and maybe trying to find a way to apply constant, steady pressure from the time it's hot enough to help til it's cooled completely. Being able to view the chip while doing this (if you can't?) might help you get a sense of what's actually going on.

 

[quantumii]

I will get back to trying to restore this machine soon, and I will try to heat it more. If I break it I will at least have a spare machine for my two other TiBook's

It did definitely help after the first time I did this, as to begin with it was freezing much more than now.